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Sainte-Beuve's 
Critical Theory and Practice 

After 1849 



By 



LANDER MACCLINTOCK 




THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 






SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY 
AND PRACTICE AFTER 1849 



THE UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO PRESS 
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Sainte-Beuve's Critical Theory 
and Practice After 1849 



By 



LANDER MAC CLINTOCK 



v. 




THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 



**kV 



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Copyright 1920 By 
The University op Chicago 



All Rights Reserved 



Published May 1920 



©CI.A570277 



Composed and Printed By 

The University of Chicago Press 

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 



JUiN -8 I, 



PREFACE 



It is the plan of the following study to survey and co-ordinate 
Sainte-Beuve's theories and practice of criticism during the latter part of 
his life, after his return from Liege and his " conversion" from romanti- 
cism. It is my hope to continue somewhat adequately the great work of 
Michaut's Sainte-Beuve avant les lundis. 

The last generation of students of Sainte-Beuve have carefully ex- 
pounded the scientific or naturalistic features of his work ; but they have 
often neglected his aesthetic and classical criticism. I have tried to 
rectify the emphasis here and to exhibit the two aspects of his work in 
their true proportions. 

I have thought it well to give the critic's ideas and practice in his 
own words, following his doctrine of significant quotation. This has 
resulted inevitably in a somewhat broken style, my phrasing being 
chiefly connecting links to the master's statements. 

My illustrations and embodiments of Sainte-Beuve's categories, 
descriptions, and judgments are many, and I hope representative and 
comprehensive; they cannot be exhaustive. After gathering them 
slowly I have read the entire body of the Causeries and the Lundis 
rapidly and feel convinced that nothing can be found there contradictory 
to what is here printed — extensions, corroboration, and applications are 
abundant. 

It is a great pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to my 

teachers in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of 

Chicago, and to offer my thanks especially to Professor Nitze, under 

whose stimulating teaching and distinguished scholarship I pursued my 

doctoral studies, to Professor Dargan for the benefit of his deep learning 

and keen criticism, and to my father and mother for much help and 

counsel. 

L. M. 

Chicago 
May 1920 



CONTENTS 

I. Scope of the Study: History of the Subject .... 

The plan of the book is to collect and classify Sainte-Beuve's 
utterances on literary criticism written after 1849; from a study of 
the Causeries du lundi and the Nouveaux lundis to determine whether 
or not he applied in critical practice the principles he laid down as 
theory — Justification for selecting period 1849-69 for this study — 
Articles and books which have been important in the treatment of 
the later and mature Sainte-Beuve are cited and the most significant 
discussed. 

II. The Functions of Criticism 

Difficulties of the subject, of fixing and classifying Sainte- 
Beuve's thought, due to the fluidity of his mind and the contra- 
dictory nature of his theories — The functions of criticism are to 
seek the truth and to destroy false ideas; to aid society morally and 
aesthetically; to aid the authors while they are living, by criticism 
and counsel; when they are dead, by defending their fame and 
spreading abroad their reputation; to aid the reader by telling him 
what is worth reading and exploring for him, by giving him informa- 
tion necessary to correct understanding of great works, and by pre- 
paring his mind for the reception of them; to give expression to the 
gift of the critic, criticism as self-expression and as artistic creation. 

III. Scientific Criticism 

Sainte-Beuve believed that the criticism of taste, unaided, was 
not adequate to meet modern conditions; there must be a criticism 
based on scientific principles. He outlines a plan for such criticism. 
The book is the product of the author, so that we must study the 
author to understand the book. We must study him in his country, 
his race, his epoch, his family, his education, and his early environ- 
ment; at the moment of his first success, and at the time of 
his dissolution; in his disciples and literary descendants, in his 
friends, in his enemies, and in his private relations. When we 
have thus attacked the subject from various points of view we must 
attempt to sum up the man in a few words and place him in his 
family of minds. (A discussion at this point of the doctrine of the 
master-passion and the family-of-minds theories of Sainte-Beuve.) 
Sainte-Beuve justifies this close study of the author on the grounds 

vii 



PAOE 

1 



8 



28 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

that we ought to know whatever we can and all we can, that merely 
to enjoy the products of the mind does not satisfy the critical intel- ** 
ligence. But the critic must admit that when all these facts are 
known and placed in their proper relation there is yet something that 
escapes analysis and can be attained only through critical intuition — 
individual genius. 

IV. Aesthetic Criticism 46 

Once the critic has explained an author or a work on scientific 
grounds, there arises the task of estimating the individual work 
itself. Is it good or bad ? What is good or bad in it ? Sainte-Beuve 
believed in attempting a final appraisement of a work or an author. 
He judged on the basis of five criteria: taste (his definition of taste), 
v truth, that is ,to say, truth to life, tradition (his definition of tradi- 
tion, his relations to^jcontemporary, intellectual and critical move- 
ments), logic and consistency, morality. 

V. The Qualifications of the Critic * 69 

Pope drew the portrait of Sainte-Beuve's ideal critic, but the 
latter supplements it with additional touches. The main qualifica- 
tions he asked for were: The true critic is born not made, and must 
have the critical instinct. He is not an ffjist^whc^has made a 
failure, nor should he be an artist at all, for the creative artist 
necessarily has predilections which prevent his delivering an 
unbiased judgment. He has a quick and true perception and 
appreciation of values. He has a faculty of " demi-metamorphosis," 
of putting himself in another's place. He has perfect independence, 
an ability to adjust himself to new circumstances, to varying sub- 
jects and aspects of subjects. The critic should have the weight 
of authority and the assurance to make himself heard. He must be 
in possession of a wide field of knowledge. He is free of all moral 
and social bonds. Ideally he is absolutely impartial, disillusioned, 
free even from patriotic prejudice — The critics whom Sainte-Beuve 
admired and who influenced him most. 

VI. Precepts and Procedes 83 

A gathering of loosely related principles connected with the 
critical process: his choice of subject, his preference for minor 
authors; a definite time auspicious for the criticism of any author; 
the dangers and difficulties of judging in opposition to accepted 
opinions and canons; the critic's extensive knowledge and wide 
background — To make a harmony of contemporary and previous 
thinking and art; the ways of attacking a subject; with fixed ideas, 
with open mind; limitation and fixing of subject, author to be 



CONTENTS 



IX 



PACE 



treated for the right things and for all the right things; impartiality, 
a critical canon; the critic must allow no idea or attitude to deceive 
him in his search for reality; the critic, like the chemist, at the 
mercy of his experiment or examination, must not change or 
exaggerate; "preserving the tone" of the book under consideration, 
making the criticism as nearly as possible of the same literary 
atmosphere as its subject; Sainte-Beuve's doctrine of citations 
from authors studied; Sainte-Beuve's critical vocabulary, two of his 
important epithets studied, Attic and A static; Sainte-Beuve's ideas 
on the function of literature, on genres, and on style. 

VII. Sainte-Beuve's Practice in Criticism 108 

A study of the Causeries du lundi and the Nouveaux lundis on 
the basis of their subject-matter, to determine on what sort of 
material he laid most stress. Biographical matter : the history of an 
individual, his character; historical matter: political history, 
itudes de mceurs; literary matter: exposition of a work, the pres- 
entation of another man's ideas and material; literary history, 
critical discussion and judgment by Sainte-Beuve himself; polemic 
matter, philosophic matter including aesthetic. The results show 
that Sainte-Beuve was primarily interested in biography and 
character studies — Study of his practice, using the outlines of 
sections III and IV — The conclusion is that Sainte-Beuve kept 
the general outlines and even the details of his formulas well in 
mind, although he made no formal or rigid application of them and 
varied his method with the nature of his material. 



Bibliography 
Index . 



152 
i57 



I. SCOPE OF THE STUDY: HISTORY OF THE 

SUBJECT 

The plan of the following treatise is twofold: it is, in the first place, 
an attempt to collect from the writing of Sainte-Beuve in his third and 
last period those passages in which he discusses the science and art of 
criticism and to present them so arranged and documented as to give a 
coherent and, as nearly as possible, a complete view of the body of ideas 
that seemed to him essential for correct critical judgments. One can 
hardly promise that this arrangement will constitute a " critical method" 
or that it will take on the formal outline of a system. But it will present 
in natural connection the main typical dicta, the more or less deliberately 
formulated rules of procedure which the great critic enunciated. The 
plan of the treatise includes, in the second place, a study in Sainte-Beuve's 
own practice — being an attempt to discover whether or not, and to what 
extent, he applies his own announced ideas. 

The third period of Sainte-Beuve's literary activity extends from 
the year 1849, the year of his return to Paris after his year's professor- 
ship in the University of Liege, to 1869, the year of his death. This 
period is peculiarly inviting to the student of criticism, because it com- 
prises the work of the master after he had passed through his formative 
and tentative periods and had reached the full plenitude of his powers. 
Possessed of a native critical endowment which has probably never 
been equaled, he had passed through two phases of critical activity — 
had essayed two definable types of criticism — and had entered, in 1849, 
that wonderful stretch of twenty years of whose achievement Saintsbury 
says: "We shall certainly look in vain anywhere for such an example 
[of criticism] in quality and quantity combined as is presented by the 
Causeries du lundi and the Nouveaux lundis." 1 Guido Mazzoni, speak- 
ing to the same effect, says: "Tutta la serie dei Lundis e uno di quegli 
sforzi felici dove nulla appare dello sforzo; e stupenda raccolta di fatti 
e di gMdizi, e forse il piu. vario ed acuto studio che sia statit intrapresa 
dell' anima umana." 2 

The two critical metamorphoses through which Sainte-Beuve passes, 
as well as the third and last stage at which he arrived, are described by 

1 George Saintsbury, History of Criticism, III (1904), 318. 
3 Mazzoni, Tra Libri e CartX^p. 379. 



2 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

himself in a well-known passage in the introduction to the Causeries 
du lundi: 

Au Globe d'abord, et ensuite a, la Revue de Paris, sous la Restauration, 
jeune et debutant, je fis de la critique polemique, volontiers agressive, entre- 
prenante du moins, de la critique d'invasion. Sous le regne de Louis-Philippe, 
pendant les 18 annees de ce regime d'une litterature sans initiative et plus 
paisible qu'animee, j'ai fait, principalement a la Revue des deux mondes} de 
la critique plus neutre, plus impartiale, mais surtout analytique, descriptive, 
et curieuse. Cette critique pourtant avait, comme telle, un defaut: elle ne 
concluait pas. Les temps redevenant plus rudes, — j'ai cm qu'il y avait 
moyen d'oser plus, sans manquer aux convenances, et de dire enfin nettement 
ce qui me semblait la verite sur les ouvrages et sur les auteurs. 1 

Here we have his own characterization of the period that we are 
concerned with — he proposes "dire enfin nettement ce qui me semblait 
la verite sur les ouvrages et sur les auteurs." He would renounce 
polemic criticism, he would forego purely descriptive criticism, he would 
now seek the truth! 

It was in his work on Chateaubriand et son groupe litter aire, of 1849, 
that he inaugurated his new manner and established his new aim — the 
attempt to find and to express freely la verite — a manner and an aim 
that he did not alter during the succeeding twenty years, save as he 
achieved an ever greater freedom of thought and adopted an ever greater 
freedom of expression. It is in this volume that we have the first 
unmistakable foreshadowings of the critical revolution of which Sainte- 
Beuve was the prophet and the leader. 

It would seem, in view of the general recognition by the critics of 
the three periods with a radical change of point of view in each period, 
and especially in view of Sainte-Beuve's own statement outlining them, 
that no further defense were needed for the plan of studying the third 
period as a separable unified field. And the period shows an unbroken 
unity so far as regards his critical theory. The growing freedom in the 
expression of his opinions may have been due partly to external condi- 
tions. He became more independent socially and economically; having 
been appointed a senator with a fairly good salary he was not obliged 
to write for money, and having attained the dignity of an officer of the 
empire he may have felt that he was beyond the range of personal spite 
or professional revenge. But the unifying force that holds the period 
together is something deeper, more permanent, and more organic than 
the freedom he enjoyed in expressing his opinions. This deeper unifying 

1 Causeries du lundi, I, 2. 



HISTORY OF THE SUBJECT 3 

force we must try to isolate and identify. Levallois says that in spite 
of the wide variety of Sainte-Beuve's subject-matter, there is a "secret 
procede et un persistant instinct" which "a preside a l'economie de 
cette construction et qui en a regie les details." 1 When one comes from 
a fresh and closely consecutive reading of the Causeries du lundi and 
the Nouveaux lundis, he sees that the unity running through the two 
series owes little to any external sameness of treatment — indeed there 
seems to have been almost a conscious avoidance of monotony — but is 
a matter of unity of thought and point of view, very broad, indeed, and 
very rich in detail, but definitely consistent. 

Another feature of the period particularly enticing to the student 
of criticism is the fact that as Sainte-Beuve grew older he displayed 
more and more pride and interest in his art; he took his function as 
critic more seriously; he interpreted it more profoundly; he philoso- 
phized more about it; and he analyzed its processes more expertly. To 
be impressed with the growth of his consciousness of his vocation as a 
critic, one has only to contrast the low estimate made of the critic in 
the article, "La critique sous PEmpire" 2 written in 1850, with the lofty 
ideal of the critic, the pioneer of art, the preserver of taste, the aid and 
co-worker of the artist, presented in the last volume of the Lundis, in 
an article of 1 858.3 

We are not surprised, then, to find that the Nouveaux lundis con- 
tain much more critical philosophy than the Causeries du lundi; but 
this increased amount of theorizing does not represent a change 
of mind — it is crystallization. Sainte-Beuve was gradually clarify- 
ing his ideas — as an expert he was generalizing from multitudes of 
specific instances — and the ideas were those that he retained and upon 
which he proceeded throughout his third period. 

To collect and classify the important and significant dicta that 
Sainte-Beuve made about criticism and the critic in this, his great period, 
in all moot and pivotal matters giving his own words; to determine 
whether or not he observed in practice the principles he laid down in 
theory — this is the hope and plan of this dissertation. 

From many points of view there has as yet been made no adequate 
complete study of the works of Sainte-Beuve. Most of his critics do 
not take sufficiently into account the division of his work into the three 

1 Jules Levallois, Sainte-Beuve (1869), pp. 100 ff. 

2 Causeries du lundi, I, 371: "M. de Feletz et de la critique littSraire sous 
l'empire." 

•3 "De la tradition en literature," ibid., XV, 356 ff. 




4 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

periods; even those who are most aware of the division do not bring 
into clear relief the radical distinctions between the three sections of his 
work. Many of the studies are sketchy and merely literary, and there- 
fore, from the point of view of scholarship, inadequate; many of them 
become entirely absorbed in the striking, as one may say, the sen- 
sational aspects of Sainte-Beuve's work to the neglect of its other 
aspects; many of them present bodies of opinion which, however inter- 
esting and seemingly sound, are not accompanied by those citations and 
quotations which would enable the student to verify and test them. 

Those books which, because they contribute something new and 
characteristic, have been found most useful and suggestive, are con- 
sidered here in chronological order. 

The article of Edmond Scherer in his Etudes critiques sur la litter ature 
contemporaine, 1 though written as early as 1863, remains one of the 
1 most valuable studies of Sainte-Beuve. But Scherer's view was neces- 
sarily incomplete, since he wrote before the completion of the critic's 
work. Besides, his treatment is not of sufficient length or scope to call 
for extensive analysis or comment. 

Jules Levallois, in his Sainte-Beuve, 2 devotes to the Causeries du lundi 
and the Nouveaux lundis some twenty-five pages, which, however, are 
almost exclusively taken up with describing, expounding, and criticizing 
the account of Sainte-Beuve's method which he himself gives in the 
Nouveaux lundis* This account is important, but seen in the right 
perspective is by no means sufficiently inclusive or profound to be taken, 
as Levallois takes it, as the sole basis for the discussion of Sainte-Beuve's 
method. As a matter of fact, in this famous passage Sainte-Beuve is 
describing only one phase of his thought — that which finds expression 
in his naturalistic criticism — and Levallois, apparently assuming that 
it is an account of the great critic's complete system, has no great 
difficulty in offering objections to it, finding faults in it. Many of 
Levallois' objections are specious and would have been modified by a 
little further reading in Sainte-Beuve himself. It should be self-evident 
that no consideration of Sainte-Beuve can be adequate that takes as 
its text any one statement of his critical intention, no matter how 
emphatic and detailed the statement may be. The passage that Leval- 
lois is content to examine is interesting and important, but it must be 

1 Edmond Scherer, Etudes critiques sur la litterature contemporaine, I (1863), 321. 
3 Levallois, Sainte-Beuve (Paris, 1872). 
•3 Nouveaux lundis, III, 1 fL, article on Chateaubriand. 



HISTORY OF THE SUBJECT 5 

supplemented by the examination of scores of passages, some confirma- 
tory and some contradictory, and must be checked and balanced by a 
knowledge of the critic's total thinking. 

Brunetiere, in his Evolution de la critique, 1 is very helpful and illumi- 
nating and more satisfying in his treatment of Sainte-Beuve than is 
Levallois, because he takes into account the aesthetic side of the critic's 
work. As a matter of fact, not Levallois only, but most writers on 
Sainte-Beuve have sacrificed the aesthetic side of his work to the natural- 
istic and scientific side. Brunetiere, however, makes too sharp a dis- 
tinction between the two series, Causeries du lundi and Nouveaux lundis, 
when he asserts that it was only in the later series that Sainte-Beuve 
put forward final conclusions, when he again refused to allow "que la 
critique se reduisit a n'etre que l'expression des jugements? ou des 
gouts personnels du critique." 2 This admission Sainte-Beuve did not 
make once during the whole of his last period, as is amply proved by 
evidence offered in another connection in this dissertation. 

Brunetiere is sound in his insistence upon the general unity of thought 
holding the period together. His treatment suffers from the misleading 
condensation inseparable from the handling of so large a topic in a few 
pages. 

Emile Faguet's account in the Politiques et moralistes 3 is also less 
extensive than it should be and is not adequately documented. It is 
a popular account of Sainte-Beuve, attempting to cover the whole of 
his work in one article. Like all such attempts, it is foredoomed to 
incompleteness in the treatment of this third period. Faguet, in his 
reaction against systematizing, falls into the other extreme and writes 
this statement, for example: "Du reste, a la fin de sa vie, Sainte-Beuve 
n'etait plus, a proprement parler, un critique, si ce n'est par exception 
et comme par divertissement." He amplifies by explaining that Sainte- 
Beuve was a moralist and a psychologist, not a literary critic. He 
undoubtedly does good service in laying stress on this side of the critic's 
activities, but his statement is without the proper reservations and seems 
to imply that Sainte-Beuve was not at all times a critic of literature — a 
misleading implication, since in this last period, as indeed throughout 
his career, he was primarily interested in the art of literature and the 
literary artist. A complete, co-ordinated reading of all Sainte-Beuve's 
work will, we believe, correct the impression made by Faguet. 

1 F. Brunetiere, Devolution de la critique (Paris, 1890), p. 234. 

3 Ibid., p. 237. 

3 Emile Faguet, Politiques et moralistes (Paris, 1899), III, 185. 



6 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

Gustave Michaut, in the last chapter of Sainte-Beuve avant les lundis, 1 
gives a study of Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire. Sainte-Beuve 
collected the material in this book for a course of lectures which he offered 
in the year of his professorship at Liege, 1848-49. It is not surprising 
that some of the ideas which later found full expression in the essays 
are foreshadowed and some even quite clearly embodied in the Chateau- 
briand. Michaut examines the critical technique of this volume, con- 
cluding that, allowing for the larger scope of the book, it is not different 
in technique from the essays. 

The two poles of Sainte-Beuve 's critical world are, according to 
Michaut, taste and truth, and by them he orients himself, whatever 
book or man he has before him for study. Though we shall be obliged, 
after a survey of the great critic's later work, to add to these cardinal 
standpoints for judgment three more categories of equal importance — tra- 
dition, logic or consistency, and morality — yet this chapter of Michaut's 
monumental work is penetrating and sound. He analyzes extensively 
the scientific attitude of Sainte-Beuve and his doctrine of scientific 
criticism, developing further the ideas of Levallois, both following 
indeed the outline made by Sainte-Beuve himself in the essay mentioned 
above. 2 

But Michaut limits himself to the earlier work. His material lies 
strictly in the years avant les lundis. This present treatise will apply 
to the late work the same sort of intensive study with a view to deducing 
in addition the principles that Sainte-Beuve developed within the 
Lundis. As a matter of course, some of the ideas expounded will coincide 
with those that Michaut found — Sainte-Beuve did not abrogate all 
his earlier principles. It is the hope of this thesis to supplement and 
complete, not to supersede, the Sainte-Beuve avant les lundis. 

Saintsbury, in his voluminous History of Criticism* gives a fairly 
full account of Sainte-Beuve. As is usual with Saintsbury, the essay 
is full of whims and subject to affectations, and the sketch is literary 
rather than technical. But below this surface we find one of the most 
inspiring accounts of the master that have been written. It is especially 
valuable for its clear and firm outline of Sainte-Beuve's working prin- 
ciples and for its picture of the organization of a typical or standard 
Causerie. 

1 Gustave Michaut, Sainte-Beuve avant les lundis (Fribourg et Paris, 1903). 

3 Nouveaux lundis, III, 1. 

3 Saintsbury, A History of Criticism (Edinburgh and London, 1904), Vol. III. 



HISTORY OF THE SUBJECT 



There remain for special mention the two latest important books in 
English: Sainte-Beuve, by George McLean Harper; and the section 
on Sainte-Beuve in Irving Babbitt's Masters of Modern French Criticism. 
Harper's book 1 is especially valuable as biography and traces the events 
of Sainte-Beuve's later life in close connection with his literary produc- 
tion. Harper is, in many respects, of the school of Sainte-Beuve himself, 
and lays his main emphasis on the more personal and intimate aspects 
of his subject. Consequently he makes no extended attempt to gather 
and systematize all of Sainte-Beuve's ideas on criticism. The earlier 
chapters, dealing with the critic in his formative period, are more 
exhaustive and helpful than are the later ones. In these latter there is 
great compression and the confusion that comes from treating in a small 
space so vast and complex a subject as the critic's ideas and practice 
during the last twenty years of his life. 

The chapter in Babbitt's book 2 was written from a distinct point of 
view, that of treating Sainte-Beuve as a naturalistic thinker, a Darwinian, 
an exponent of the scientific trend of the nineteenth century. But 
Babbitt has a firm grasp on the versatile and volatile mind of Sainte- 
Beuve, and he makes clear in a few most trenchant and convincing 
pages the essential contradiction between the master's humanistic 
instincts and his scientific convictions which led him to his attempt, 
or perhaps his dream, of making criticism both a science and an art. 
Babbitt also discusses from a modern philosophical and literary point 
of view some of the more prevalent of Sainte-Beuve's critical ideas and 
points out authoritatively and definitely the excellences and defects, 
the powers and limitations, of the great critic. Babbitt's article contains 
the most masterly writing yet done concerning the later Sainte-Beuve. 3 

The foregoing list is brief because only those books were chosen, from 
among the hundreds that make up the bibliography of the subject, 
which have contributed something new and distinctive in method, in 
material, or in philosophy to the discussion of Sainte-Beuve after 1849. 

1 George McLean Harper, Sainte-Beuve (London and Philadelphia, 1909). 

3 Irving Babbitt, The Masters of Modern French Criticism (Boston and New York, 
1912), pp. 97 ff. 

3 In a discussion and evaluation of Sainte-Beuve's later ideas and practice, it 
seems questionable to justify and illustrate conclusions by so many quotations of 
material from his early works, especially the Portraits litter aires, as early as 1832-38. 



II. THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM 

The attempt to resurvey and unify the thought of a great writer is 
of course to be approached with modesty and some misgiving. The 
task is the more formidable if the writer be one so voluminous and so 
multifarious in his interests as is Sainte-Beuve. He himself knew well 
the difficulties of such an undertaking: "II est difficile, en general, de 
ramener a Funite Pceuvre eparse d'un critique; il est delicat surtout de 
pretendre saisir le point central et le noyau de ces organisations de plus 
d'etendue que de relief." 1 He felt that his own mind was of the kind he 
described — "de plus d'etendue que de relief." "J'ai l'esprit etendu 
successivement, mais je ne l'ai pas etendu a la fois. Je ne vois bien a 
la fois qu'un point ou qu'un objet determine." 2 But the difficulties are 
challenging and the possible reward inviting. 

Our first question then is as to the teaching of the great critic con- 
cerning the most fundamental problem of criticism, its functions. And 
because of its constant recurrence and strong emphasis there can be no 
doubt that Sainte-Beuve regarded as the most important function of 
criticism the discovery and proclaiming of truth. Nor is this to him so 
inclusive and formless a task as it might at first appear. When we 
examine the details of his thinking on this point we find it definite and 
practical. He had taken for his seal the English word "truth," which 
represents both la verite and le vrai. He said: "If I had a motto, it 
would be the true, the true alone, and as for the good and beautiful, they 
might fare as best they could." 3 

But his scientific positivism, as it appears in the search for truth 
and in sense of fact, is so modified by his philosophy of flux and by the 
humanistic generosity of his sympathies that he has frequent moments 
of misgiving, such as is voiced in this passage: "Qu'est-ce que la verite ? 
Nous sommes de pauvres esquifs qui ramons sur la mer sans fin. Nous 
montrons quelque reflet de lumiere sur la vague brisee, et nous disons: 
c'est la verite"* If this has a skeptical pragmatic ring it is because 
Sainte-Beuve conceived of truth as relative and contingent; it is not 

1 Nouveaux lundis, V, 459. 3 Cahiers, p. 39. 

3 Correspondance, II, 41. Of the book on Chateaubriand: " Je n'ai voulu qu'une 
chose; etre vrai et rendre le vrai" {ibid., I, 267). 

4 Causeries du lundi, XI, 514. 

8 



THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM 



philosophic, idealistic, unfunctioning truth that he seeks, but la verity 
vraie of the scientist, factual truth and fidelity of detail. This he feels is 
not easy to find; yet it is less difficult to find it than to secure its accept- 
ance. 1 " Pauvre verite, verite vraie, verite nue, que de peine on a a te 
faire sortir de ton puits et quand on est parvenu a t'en sortir a demi et 
a. mi-corps, que de gens accourus de toutes parts qui ont hate de t'y 
renf oncer." 3 Thus half jestingly does he state the profound and pro- 
foundly discouraging fact that even in matters purely literary people 
hate the truth and cling lovingly to illusion. 3 He was convinced that 
the large number of persons who were offended by his volume on Chateau- 
briand were so offended because they were not able or willing to face the 
truth. "'Je suis convaincu depuis longtemps,' m'ecrivait a ce sujet 
un etranger qui sait a merveille notre litterature, 4 'que pour presque 
tout le monde, la verite dans la critique a quelque chose de fort deplaisant, 
elle leur parait ironique et desobligeante; on veut une verite accom- 
modee aux vues et aux passions des partis et des coteries.'" 5 It is 
precisely this "accommodated" truth that Sainte-Beuve often depre- 
cated, which indeed he condemned as a most pernicious form of falsi- 
fication. It must be acknowledged here, however, as will be pointed 
out elsewhere, that in his own practice he sometimes tempered the wind 
of critical severity with more than a modicum of mercy. 

Ignoring the suffering of those who are deprived of their beloved illu- 
sions, and disregarding those who may visit their displeasure on the 
iconoclastic critic, he must make it his first concern to seek with exact 
and scrupulous care the truth — to handle the facts from which he is to 
draw his truth as the chemist handles his data; more than once he 
compares V analyse critique with V analyse chitnique, assuming that the 
two processes might ideally be equally exact. 6 

He embodies these ideas in the following significant passage on the 
role and activity of the genuine critic: 

Le sage et le critique qui a d'avance purge son esprit de toutes les idoles 
et de tous les fantomes ... ne continue pas moins, chaque jour et a chaque 

1 Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 161: "La verite est difficile a bien etablir et a fixer en 
tout, et particulierement en histoire." 

2 Cahiers, p. 139. 

3 Sainte-Beuve often asked himself whether it were not better to allow a certain 
amount of this illusion to remain undisturbed. 

4 This is undoubtedly the "friend" whom Sainte-Beuve quotes whenever he has 
anything to say that he does not dare to say in his own person. It is needless to point 
out that it is a purely rhetorical device and is quite commonly used by Sainte-Beuve. 

5 Nouveaux lundis, III, 3. 6 Ibid., I, 265. 



10 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

instant, de servir a sa maniere Pavancement de Pespece, d'etudier, de chercher 
le vrai, le vrai seul, de s'y tenir sans le forcer, sans Pexagerer, sans y ajouter, 
et en laissant subsister, a cote des points acquis, tous les vides et toutes les 
lacunes qu'il n'a pu combler. 1 

The fact that Saint-Beuve is here speaking of scholarship, of erudi- 
tion, rather than more narrowly of criticism, does not lessen the weight 
of the passage; for in his mind there is no chasm between scholarship and 
criticism, since learning is an essential item in the critic's equipment, 
and the mastery of the field in which his subject-matter lies a necessary 
first step in the critic's total procedure. 

The passion for the truth of exactness he recognizes as a distinctively 
modern trait, the product of the scientific movement; he contrasts the 
point of view arising from this essentially new procedure with that of 
the ancients whose ideal in the writing of critical history was beauty: 
"L'art etait la forme la plus haute sous laquelle Pantiquite aimait a, 
concevoir et a, composer Phistoire" — the aim and ideal for example of 
Tacitus and Livy; on the contrary, "la verite est la seule loi decidement 
que les modernes aient a suivre et a. consulter. La verite, toute la 
verite done! Passons par la puisqu'il le faut et allons jusqu'au bout 
tant qu'elle nous conduit." 2 

It seems plain in this and in many other passages quite as emphatic 
that when Sainte-Beuve says la verite he means truth to facts — factual 
and scientific, not abstract, truth — truth, that is to say, in the Aristo- 
telian, not in the Platonic, sense. And with this view of criticism he tends 
logically to make of it a science rather than an art. That is to say, he 
views it as a science so far as thought and content go; in matters of form, 
criticism being a branch of literature, he provides for the element of art. 
Just here may be found, as Babbitt points out, 3 the generating center of 
that conflict and incongruity so constantly found in Sainte-Beuve's 
thinking; it lies in the adjustment or the maladjustment between his 
humanistic instincts and ideals on the one hand and his scientific con- 
victions and knowledge on the other. Under the sway of the one he 
seems to say that criticism is as artistic as poetry; under the sway of 
the other, that it is as scientific as chemistry. How he effected a har- 
monious or at least a working compromise between the two views may 
appear later. Our concern here is with his insistence upon the scien- 

1 Nouveaux hindis, IX, 105. 

3 Ibid., Ill, 303. 

3 Babbitt, The Masters of Modern French Criticism, p. 135. 



THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM n 

tific scrupulousness and completeness called for in gathering the informa- 
tion necessary for a well-grounded criticism : 

Nous tous, partisans de la methode naturelle en litterature et qui l'ap- 
pliquons chacun selon not re mesure a des degres differents, nous tous, artisans 
et serviteurs d'une meme science 1 que nous cherchons a rendre aussi exacte 
que possible, sans nous payer de notions vagues et de vains mots; continuons 
done d 'observer sans relache, d'etudier et de penetrer les conditions des ceuvres 
diversement remarquables et l'innnie variety des formes de talent; forcons-les 
de nous rendre raison et de nous dire comment et pourquoi elles sont de telle 
ou telle facon et qualite plutot que d'une autre, dussions-nous ne jamais tout 
expliquer, et dut-il rester, apres tout not re effort, un dernier point et comme une 
derniere citadelle irreductible. 2 

This last sentence gives us an example of those apparent vacillations 
that seem to overtake the great critic in his most earnest defenses of a 
purely scientific criticism; for here in the implied admission that there 
are reaches of an author's work closed to scientific investigation and 
open only to intuitive penetration he seems to abandon his case for 
science. 3 But this admission does not invalidate his claim as to the 
necessity of gathering, in a strictly scientific way, the facts and all the 
facts, though this process must in many cases be supplemented by an 
intuitive activity of the sympathetic critic which functions beyond the 
horizon of science. 

The establishment of truth has two aspects, complementary and 
of almost equal importance. Obviously, of course, it brings to light 
actual facts, verifiable knowledge; but in the second place it destroys 
false traditions, disposes of untrue and unreal conceptions, blasts 
baseless illusions, and clears out other useless and dangerous rubbish: 
"L'histoire (meme litteraire) transmise est presque toujours factice; 
a nous de briser la glace, pour retrouver le courant." 4 It is apparent 
at once that, just because Sainte-Beuve is a critic and not a literary 
appreciator or expounder, and because he is dealing with a vast num- 
ber of reputations irregularly and popularly established, he finds more 
work to do in the destruction of wrong critical impressions and con- 
clusions than in the establishment of new facts and fresh points of view. 

1 Notice the word ''science" used here. Cf. his "science of minds," etc., in the 
second section. 

2 On Taine's Hist&ire de la litterature anglaise in Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 88. 

3 Sainte-Beuve did not hesitate to contradict himself. Elsewhere he even speaks 
of the right of the critic to "dire, redire, et se contredire" {Correspondance, II, 370). 

4 Causeries du lundi, XI, 494. 




12 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

This will explain and justify much of his destructive criticism — he is a 
new, critical Cervantes. To find the main current of truth is a prime 
motive of the critic; to re-establish real facts about a writer and to clear 
away from his reputation the mass of fictitious legends and merely 
attributed excellences which grow up about any considerable reputa- 
tion — " inventions ... que la critique n'admet pas" — this he must do 
without pity. 1 

The critic's search for truth leads him to go deeper than external 
superficial facts in the hope of finding the inner mental spirit of the 
age or the man he is studying. He will refuse to accept for serious con- 
sideration superficial appearances, absurdities, and falsehoods, even 
though they bear the stamp of age and long acceptance. These things 
the critic brushes aside for the sake of going directly at the central, 
generating, significant features of his book, his man, or his epoch. 
Sainte-Beuve in his own practice never hesitated at this point. 2 Indeed 
he seemed to find a righteous joy in the destruction of traditions which 
he regarded as embodying falsehood, regardless of their antiquity or 
their respectability — this in addition to a certain malicious satisfaction 
he derived from the very process of disillusionment. 

The critic's care for the truth is concerned even with the delicate 
and difficult matter of truth to atmosphere. Sainte-Beuve felt that 
the first step in creating the true atmosphere is to find in the man his 
trait saillant: "C'est ainsi ... qu'il faut, en definitive, juger des grands 
hommes, sans s'amuser aux accessoires, et en s'elevant jusqu'au point 
qui domine en eux les contradictions et les travers." 3 By placing the 
emphasis on this salient or distinguishing trait he brings his subject at 
once into the true light; 4 he will not hesitate to tear away the veils of 

1 Nauveaux lundis, V, 219. Sainte-Beuve goes on here to express regret that in 
the interests of the truth these legends which are sometimes most beautiful should 
have to be destroyed. "Si nous detruisions la legende, il semble que nous devrions 
nous mettre en peine de la remplacer aussit6t." But it is the artist in him who feels 
this regret and the artist is glad for the sacrifice for the benefit of the scientist. 

In another place he expresses a similar doubt as to the expediency of destroying 
popular beliefs. "II en est des personnages celebres comme des choses, la majority 
des hommes, ne les juge qu'a un certain point de perspective et d'illusion. Est-il 
bien necessaire de venir miner cette illusion, et de les montrer par le dedans tels 
qu'ils sont, en leur ouvrant,devant tous.les entrailles ? Je me le demande, et pourtant 
je le fais" (Causeries du lundi, XI, 461). 

2 Causeries du lundi, XI, 517. 3 ibid., Ill, 185. 

4 It would have been easy for him, he says, to have made a more favorable portrait 
of M. Bazin but "je crois que la plus grande faveur qu'on puisse faire a un ho mm e 



THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM 



13 



accumulated legend that obscure the true figure; 1 he must display it 
with its faults and virtues, its limitations and qualifications; 3 he must 
disregard affection and predilection — all in order that the way may be 
cleared for the presentation of the particular and characterizing 
originality of the man or the book, "montrer a tous en quoi consistent 
l'innovation et l'espece de decouverte reelle charmant artiste." 3 He 
sums up his teaching on this point when he says that he has studied 
Villemain with a view to presenting him as he is: 

Les gens de lettres, les historiens et precheurs moralistes ne sont-ils done 
que des comediens qu'on n'a pas le droit de prendre en dehors du role qu'ils 
se sont arrange et defini ? faut-il ne les voir que sur la scene et tant qu'ils y 
sont ? ou bien est-il permis, le sujet bien connu, de venir hardiment, bien que 
discretement, glisser le scalpel et indiquer le defaut de la cuirasse ? de montrer 
les points de suture entre le talent et Tame ? de louer Tun, mais de marquer 
aussi le defaut de l'autre, qui se ressent jusque dans le talent meme et dans 
l'effet qu'il produit a la longue ? La litterature y perdra-t-elle ? e'est possible: 
la science morale y gagnera. 4 

The critic should resolutely clear away from his author this overlay of 
legend and popular overestimation even at the risk of incurring the repro- 
bation that Sainte-Beuve says he endured because of his iconoclasm 
in respect to Chateaubriand. But the honest and fearless critic "ne 
pretend rien oter que de faux, on ne veut y remettre que la verite de la 
physionomie et l'entiere ressemblance." 5 

When he has isolated the trait saillant or has identified the faculty 
maitresse the critic has then the privilege and the duty of placing the 
author in the great literary scheme, and thus recording for his generation, 
if not for all time, what he feels to be the truth: 

Le devoir de chaque generation est d'enterrer ses morts et de celebrer 
plus particulierement ceux qui ont droit a. des honneurs distingues. Quand 



distingue ... e'est de le montrer le plus au vif qu'on peut, et le plus saillant dans les 
lignes de la verite (ibid., II, 484). 

He says elsewhere that he writes of Tocqueville in order to present the real man 
and "prendre, autant que je le pouvais, la mesure de l'homme, avant qu'il passat 
a l'etat de demi-dieu par le fait de l'apotheose academique" (Nouveaux lundis, I, 150). 

1 His own most extensive unveiling was perhaps the Chateaubriand et son groupe 
litteraire. He says also of C. G. Etienne: "Dans ce qu'on a ecrit jusqu'a present sur 
lui, je remarque bien des choses convenues, et commandoes, qui masquent un peu la 
physionomie veritable; je n'ai aucune raison pour ne pas restituer quelque chose ici, 
d'autant plus qu'il doit s'y meler bien des eloges" (Causeries du lundi, VI, 474). He 
says the same thing of Raynouard in Causeries du lundi, V, 2. 

2 Causeries du lundi, II, 286. 4 Correspondance, I, 316. 

3 Ibid., VIII, 414. s Nouveaux lundis, I, 187. 



14 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

je dis celebrer, je n'entends pas cette louange uniforme et banale qui tend a 
grandir et a. exhausser un personnage au dela du vrai; la meilleure oraison 
funebre, la seule digne des gens d'esprit qui en sont l'objet, est celle, qui, 
sans rien surfaire, va degager et indiquer en eux, au milieu de bien des qualites 
confuses, le trait distinctif et saillant de leur physionomie." 1 

It is also wise "revenir de jtemps en temps sur les di verses epoques 
litteraires, meme celles qui ont ete deja tres-explorees et qui sont censees 
les mieux connues, pour y constater les changements introduits par le 
cours des etudes, pour enregistrer les acquisitions reelles et faire justice 
des pretentions peu fondees." 2 

The first function of criticism, then, is the establishment of truth, 
basing it upon the fullest collection and consideration of facts, weeding 
out the irrelevancies and inventions, establishing, in a word, history 
indubitable and as complete as possible. 

This brings us to the second function of criticism, which is, in the 
phrase of our own day, "social betterment," the actual amelioration of 
social conditions, the improvement of social institutions, and the develop- 
ment of a social psychology. These operations take place in two fields, 
in that of morals and ideas, and in that of aesthetics. 

After every social upheaval literature must help to rebuild the edifices 
of society, and criticism must aid in this rehabilitation. 

Toutes les fois qu'apres un long bouleversement l'ordre politique se repare 
et reprend sa marche reguliere, l'ordre litteraire tend a se mettre en accord 
et a suivre de son mieux. La critique (quand critique il y a) ... accomplit 
son ceuvre, et sert a la restauration commune. 3 

Malherbe accomplished such a task after the Ligue, Boileau after the 
Fronde. In 1800 it was the critical small change of Malherbe and 
Boileau "qui remirent le bon ordre dans les choses de l'esprit et firent 
la police des Lettres." 4 Perhaps Sainte-Beuve hoped to render some such 
social service when after the coup d'etat of 1851 he rallied with such 
extraordinary promptness, though with none too great cordiality, to the 
standard of the new empire in his article "Les Regrets," published 
in 1852. 5 

1 Nouveaux lundis, V, 440. Sainte-Beuve might have added "by pointing out and 
emphasizing their faculte mattresse" 

2 Ibid., IV, 289. 3 Causeries du hindi, I, 374. 

4 Ibid., I, 374. Sainte-Beuve does not often admit even this much virtue in 
neo-classical ideas. 

5 Ibid., VI, 397. Cf. Harper, Sainte-Beuve, pp. 310 ff., who describes the hatred 
which Sainte-Beuve brought on himself by this article. 



THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM 15 

Sainte-Beuve gives also specific instances of the helpful ministrations 
of the critic in the case of a diseased mental life, a spiritual malady such 
as was the mal de Rene. It was St. Marc Girardin, says Sainte-Beuve, 
who did more than anyone else toward the cure of this particular malady 
in the minds of the youth of France, both by his writing as a critic 
and by his lectures at the university. 1 Indeed Sainte-Beuve whimsically 
complains that Girardin did his work too thoroughly, so that whereas 
previously every young man longed to die of consumption, in his day 
every young man desired to become a healthy pire de famille and a 
deputy at twenty-five. 

The critic is in so real a sense a guardian of the morals of society 
that he must be depended upon to discountenance infringements of moral 
law and order. Sainte-Beuve censures Grimm severely for his failure 
to condemn certain immoral works of the eighteenth century — of 
Helvetius and Holbach. 2 So seriously does he regard this aspect of the 
critic's work that we find morality counted by him as one, though a 
minor one, of the five pierres-de-touche which he himself used in testing 
the excellence of any book, according to which he praised it as helpful 
or condemned it as dangerous to society. Of course Sainte-Beuve 
recognizes the relativity of moral codes and ideals, and he refrained from 
setting up a hard-and-fast doctrine on which the critic can completely 
depend. 3 

A further service of the critic to society is rendered when he saves 
it from becoming the prey of the charlatan, from being imposed upon 
by the egotists, self-seekers, and demagogues. Sainte-Beuve himself 
possessed in remarkably large measure the "wisdom of disillusion" 
requisite for the discharge of this duty. 4 He feels that he rendered some 
such service to the public of his day when in his two monumental volumes 
on Chateaubriand he spoiled the pose of that eminent poseur. It was 
his delight, as he considered it his duty, to demolish pedestals. 

But above all, the distinctive service of the critic to his age and his 
group is that of cultivating taste in literature and the other arts; of 
preserving and making operative in the social mind whatever of good 
taste and good usage has been handed down from former times; of pro- 
tecting the best tradition, proclaiming the best models; of constantly 
indicating the path by which beauty and distinction may be reached. 5 

1 Causeries du lundi, I, 17. 3 On morality as a critical touchstone, see p. 67. 

3 Ibid., VII, 323. * Babbitt, op. at., p. 187. 

5 Cf . Matthew Arnold: "It is the critic's business to see that the intellectual 
current of his time is broad and large, and that it moves in the right direction." See 
Essays in Criticism, pp. 1-38; also the article "Sainte-Beuve," Encyclopaedia 
Britannica. 



16 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

In Sainte-Beuve's judgment the functions of the critic here coincide with 
those of the scholar and the teacher, since it is equally their task to 
discover, conserve, and propagate true distinction, to join forces against 
the legions of the Philistines who know not if there be a tradition. To 
the critic, however, falls the further task of discovering and proclaiming 
new achievements in art and of welcoming innovations good enough 
to be added to the world's storehouse of precious things. 

In his famous essay "De la tradition en litterature" Sainte-Beuve 
gives in great detail his sense of the critic's duty toward this large and 
sacred social inheritance — in France inherited even from the mighty 
Hellenic days. This it is that the critic must help to keep uncorrupted 
and active. He should be, therefore, an agent, explosive or erosive, in 
removing those accretions that gather about and disfigure tradition and 
which from age to age become useless:" a chaque renou vehement de 
siecle, il y a dans la tradition recente qu'on croyait fondee des portions 
qui s'ecroulent, qui s'eboulent, en quelque sorte, et n'en font que mieux 
apparaitre dans sa solidite le roc et le marbre indestructible." 1 He 
draws an interesting picture of this clear tradition which the critic 
must cherish as the embodiment of urbanity and reason. 3 

The Graeco-Roman clarity and intelligence are actuating principles 
also of the Frenchman: 

Non, la tradition nous le dit ... , la raison toujours doit presider et preside 
en definitive, meme entre ces favoris et ces elus de l'imagination ; ou si elle ne 
preside pas constamment et si elle laisse par acces courir la verve, elle n'est 
jamais loin, elle est a cote qui sourit, attendant l'heure ... de revenir. C'est 
de cette religion litteraire que nous sommes, au milieu meme des plus vives 
hardiesses, et que nous voulons etre toujours. 3 

Not only does the critic guard and preserve this tradition, but by 
making it audible and active he performs a most important function — 
cultivating the taste of his public, preparing them to receive and to 
demand what is good in art. There must be taste to receive as well as 
to create before there can be a movement, a great productive moment, 
in any art. In a very real sense the receptivity of the public is as creative 
as the inspiration of the artist. 

That the critic can and may serve groups and movements of artists 
is proved by the case of Henri Beyle, the "literary hussar," and his 

1 Causeries du lundi, XV, 373. 

3 Ibid., XV, 362. See later, p. 6o, where there is a fuller discussion of his 
attitude toward the classical tradition. 

3 Ibid., XV, 368. 



THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM 



17 



victorious campaign against the army of the classicists encamped on the 
right bank of the river Public Opinion in favor of the army of the roman- 
ticists on the other bank of this same stream. 1 

The critic's whole duty is not discharged when he has served the 
public, his social group. He has also the privilege of serving the indi- 
vidual artist himself: 

Le critique, s'il fait ce qu'il doit... est une sentinelle toujours en eveille, 
sur le qui-vive. Et il ne crie pas seulement hold! il aide. Loin de ressembler 
a un pirate et de se rejouir des nauf rages, il est quelquefois comme le pilote 
cotier qui va au secours de ceux que surprend la tempete a l'entree ou au sortir 
du-port. 2 

He was, however, not slow to admit the limitations of the service that 
the critic can render to the artist — he cannot create genius: 

La critique, a chaque renouvellement de regime, peut essayer et combiner 
des programmes qu'elle croit utiles; elle peut proposer et recomposer ses plans 
d'une litterature studieuse et reparatrice ... c'est son devoir; mais l'imagina- 
tion, la fleur, l'inspiration de la passion et du sentiment, lui echappent: cela 
nait et recommence comme il plait a Dieu. 3 

He never forgets that ideally "un critique est aussi un praticien qui 
prend l'art ou il est — et qui en tire le meilleur parti" as did "Diderot, ce 
critique cordial et rechauffant." 4 His admiration of Diderot as a critic 
had precisely this basis — that the latter was practically always in sym- 
pathy with the artist, which is on the whole the most fruitful and trust- 
worthy attitude the critic can take: "Les conseils de critique a artiste 
sont utiles, mais ils ne valent rien que s'ils sont accompagn6s d'une 
sympathie intelligente." 5 It is in this spirit — as friend and well-wisher — 
that he himself criticized Flaubert's Salammbo: "On n'est jamais juge* 
que par ses amis," he exclaims in another connection. 6 

But this sympathetic attitude must not, of course, blind the critic 
to the less agreeable aspects of his duty. He must not lend himself 
to the zealous championship of his artist. He must not be afraid to 
condemn severely, to point out faults, especially curable faults. Indeed, 
Sainte-Beuve seems to feel frequently in this later period of his work 
that when the critic is in perfect agreement with the author there is 
nothing for him to say. "II en est ainsi de la critique: elle tourne court 

1 Ibid., IX, 316. This whole passage is very instructive as to the function of 
the critic. 



3 Ibid., XV, 373. 

3 Ibid., V, 381. 

4 Nouveaux lundis, III, 99. 



5 Ibid., p. 100. 

6 Caluers, p. 79. 



18 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

et s'en va quand elle est d'accord avec l'auteur." 1 The exaggeration 
in this statement is obvious, but the truth which forms its basis records 
the change that came over Sainte-Beuve's critical theory as he grew 
more experienced, and attests the distance he had traveled from the 
merely inductive criticism of his early romantic period. His insistence 
on the duty of the critic to serve the public and to act as friend and helper 
to the author is so striking that one is obliged to feel that Sainte-Beuve 
was profoundly influenced by the socializing and humanitarian move- 
ments of his day. In fact we know that at one time he joined the 
Saint-Simon cult of humanitarianism. 2 He recognized the prevailing 
current of his century: "chaque siecle a sa marotte, le notre ... a la 
marotte humanitaire." 3 

The beneficial influence of the critic upon the author may be of the 
greatest moment. It is to Boileau, to his services as arbiter and critic, 
that Sainte-Beuve attributes much of the excellence of le grand siecle. 
The passage in which he does this is so important in itself and so 
adequate a statement of the point under discussion that it may be 
quoted at some length. 

Saluons et reconnaissons aujourd'hui la noble et forte harmonie du grand 
siecle. Sans Boileau, et sans Louis XIV qui reconnaissait Boileau comme son 
Controleur-general du Parnasse, que serait-il arrive ? Les plus grands talents 
eux-memes auaient-ils rendu egalement tout ce qui forme desormais leur 
plus solide heritage de gloire ? Racine, je le crains. aurait fait plus souvent 
des Berenice; La Fontaine moins de Fables et plus de Conks; Moliere lui-meme 
aurait donne davantage dans les Scapins, et n 'aurait peut-etre pas atteint 
aux hauteurs severes du Misanthrope. En un mot, chacun de ces beaux 
genies aurait abonde dans ses defauts. 4 Boileau, c'est-a-dire le bon sens du 
poete critique, autorise et double de celui d'un grand roi, les contint tous et 
les contraignit, par sa presence respect ee, a leurs meilleures et a leurs plus graves 
ceuvres. Savez-vous ce qui, de nos jours, a manque a nos poetes, si pleins a 
leur debut de facultes naturelles, de promesses, et d'inspirations heureuses? 
II a manque un Boileau et un monarque eclaire, Tun des deux appuyant 
et consacrant l'autre. Aussi ces hommes de talent, se sentant dans un siecle 

l Nouvcaux lundis, I, 337. 

3 Michaud, op. cit., p. 294. 3 Causeries du lundi, EH, 16. 

« This is exactly what happened in the case of Le Sage: "Qu'on se figure Moliere 
n'ayant pas a cote de lui Boileau pour l'exciter, le gronder. lui conseiller la haute 
comedie et le Misanthrope; Moliere faisant une infinite de Georges Dandin, de Scapin, 
et de Pourceaugnac en diminutif. C'est la le malheur dont eut a souffrir Le Sage, qui 
est une sorte de Moliere adouci. II neut pas a ses cotes rAristarque et s'abandonna 
sans reserve aux penchants de sa nature, et aussi au besoin de vivre qui le commandait " 
{ibid., II, 37i)- 



THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM 



19 



d'anarchie et d'indiscipline, se sont vite conduits a l'avenant; ils se sont 
conduits, au pied de la lettre, non comme de nobles genies ni comme des 
hommes, mais comme des ecoliers en vacances. Nous avons vu le resultat. 1 

The excesses that Chateaubriand permitted himself in the Memoirs 
oVoutre-tombe occur because he lacked the critical offices of his 
Aristarchus, Fontanes, who had saved him from similar mistakes in 
his other works. 2 Honore de Balzac, too, the superabundant and 
flamboyant, stood in sad need of a friendly critic-mentor. "Un Aris- 
tarque vrai, sincere, intelligent, s'il avait pu le supporter, lui eut et6 
pourtant bien utile; car cette riche et luxueuse nature se prodiguait 
et ne se gouvernait pas." 3 He expresses the wish that his own counsels 
may be of service to Flaubert and save him in the future from some of 
the extravagances of Salammbo: "S'il lui arrivait seulement de tenir 
compte, dans un livre futur, d'une ou deux observations essentielles 
que nous lui aurions faites avec tout un public ami, ce serait un r6sultat." 4 
He had little confidence in the power of the artist to control his own 
exuberance, 5 and for this reason he attributes so much value to the 
restraining influence of a firm and sympathetic critic. 

The author is partly dependent on the good offices of the critic in 
the matter of the establishment and advancement of his reputation. 
It is often within the province of the critic to redress the balance for 
an author who is not receiving the credit due him. Sainte-Beuve felt 
himself to be reaching a helping hand to Scherer when he wrote: 
"M. Scherer lui-meme avait peut-etre besoin d'etre signale ... et j'ai tenu 
a, le faire sans retard; c'etait justice a la fois et plaisir; j'aime assez 
a sonner le premier coup de cloche, comme on sait." 6 He performs with 
equal pleasure the same service for many other authors, 7 exercising the 
function he claimed for the critic — the discovering and proclaiming of 
new talent or of the less well-known aspects of recognized talent. Indeed, 
a favorite type of essay with him is that which handles some unknown 
aspect of a well-known writer. He liked to introduce a famous novelist 
as a writer of plays, a philosopher or statesman as an epistolary writer, 
or more frequently some great artist or other celebrity merely as a man, 
approaching him by the intimately biographical path. 

'Ibid., VI, 511. 

3 Ibid., I, 436; see also Chateaubriand et son groupe litter aire, II, 118 ff. 
3 Ibid., II, 456; cf. also p. 457. s Babbitt, op. cit., p. 182. 

A Nouveaux lundis, IV, 72. 6 Causeries du lundi, XV, 66. 

7 E.g., Mme de Swetchine; see Nouveaux lundis, I, 210. 



20 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 



This service, so valuable to a living author, may be useful in the case 
of one no longer living — by " placing" him definitely. His own genera- 
tion is too close to him adequately to bring to light the real facts about 
him. Too often a writer's memory is laden with undeserved and unes- 
sential reproach. Sainte-Beuve proposes to perform the task that the 
writer's own generation cannot fulfil, for instance for Beranger's cor- 
respondence which he thinks had been misunderstood and misjudged. 1 
Something like this he did for Grimm; 2 for Mme de Stael who had so 
much critical influence for good and who had received so little credit. 3 
Writing of the President Jeannin he says: "Pour moi, je n'ai voulu, 
selon mon habitude, que payer ma dette envers une memoire a la fois 
considerable et non toutefois populaire et vulgaire." 4 

The effect of the reviving of forgotten writers and the rediscovery 
of neglected works is sometimes profound; the restoration of Bossuet 
was of the nature of a triumph. "La restitution de Bossuet ... est assez 
considerable en soi; c'est une assez belle conquete de la critique 
historique." 5 

The importance which Sainte-Beuve attributed to this process of 
rehabilitation and the pleasure he had in bringing to light neglected or 
forgotten aspects of art or qualities of men explain in part the fact so 
often noticed concerning him, that he neglected the greatest, choosing 
minor writers for his subjects. Certain critics have even inferred from 
this that he was incapable of rising to the high level upon which the 
great artists should be criticized. But instead of inability or perversity 
in him there are other considerations sufficient to explain Sainte-Beuve's 
choice. In the first place there are cases in which he is interested in 
the author as a representative and a product of his society. 6 And it is 
a well-known fact that a minor writer offers a clearer and simpler example 
in this case than a great one, since the great man is more than a mere 
expression of an epoch. In the second place, the critic may have occu- 
pied himself with less well-known men because it was they who needed' 
recognition and introduction, whereas the supreme geniuses did not. 7 

1 Nouveaux kindis, I, 165. a Causer ies du lundi, VII, 307. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, II, 292. 

4 Causeries du lundi, X, 178. He makes a similar statement concerning the 
reputation of Mme de Swetchine. Nouveaux lundis, I, 210. 
s Ibid., II, 356. 

6 Cf. Babbitt, op. cit., p. 155; Harper, op. cit., p. 321, and infra, "Precepts and 
Procedes," p. 85. 

7 Causeries du lundi, IV, 515. 



THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM 21 

What he says of Montesquieu he feels to be true of all writers of first 
rank: "II en a ete excellemment parle par des maitres, et il est inutile 
de venir repeter faiblement ce qui a ete bien dit une fois." 1 Sainte- 
Beuve found a very congenial task in his essays on the literary women 
of the eighteenth century, reclaiming for literature all those who were 
influential either through their writing or through their salons. 

J'ai cm et je crois encore payer une dette delicate, remplir un devoir de 
politesse ... envers des personnes rares, si brillantes a leur heure, si fetees 
et meritant de l'etre, mais dont la memoire, pour peu qu'on neglige d'en 
receuillier avec quelque precision les temoignages et les traits distinctifs, se 
dissipe de loin, s'efface peu a peu et s'evanouit. 2 

But it is equally the duty of the literary critic to allow the merciful 
pall of oblivion to cover those minor writers who have neither originality 
nor representative value. Sainte-Beuve would have deplored the prac- 
tice of modern scholars who unearth and perpetuate insignificant 
writers, better forgotten. The critic here needs much learning and well- 
trained powers of discrimination, for the mere fact that he occupies 
himself with a bygone or neglected name assures for it some prominence 
and a certain measure of immortality; he should therefore select with 
much care only those who are worthy. 3 "Et enfin fut elle en pure perte, 
cette insistence de la critique, meme lorsqu'elle n'approuve pas, est 
encore une maniere d'hommage. ... " 4 

To sum up what Sainte-Beuve conceived to be the critic's service 
to the artist: (1) he may actually improve the author's production by 
counsel and advice; (2) he may establish or augment the author's 
reputation, of the living as of the dead; (3) he prepares the public to 
receive and appreciate the author's work; (4) he especially works to 
revive and re-establish those undeservedly neglected or forgotten. 

The critic's service to the reader 5 begins in helping him to choose good 
reading and continues in assisting him to grasp and then to appreciate 
the thing he has chosen. 

L'art de la critique, en un mot, dans son sens le plus pratique et le plus 
vulgaire, consiste a savoir lire judicieusement les auteurs, et a apprendre aux 
autres a les lire de meme, en leur epargnant les tatonnements et en leur 
degageant le chemin. 6 



1 Ibid., VII, 41. 3 Ibid., p. 296. 

2 Nouveaux lundis, IV, 163. 4 Ibid., p. 72. 

s Causeries du lundi, VI, 321. He calls critics sermteurs du public. 

6 Ibid., I, 278. Again he says: "Le critique n'est qu'un homme qui sait lire 
et qui apprend a lire aux autres" {Portraits litteraires, III, 546). 



22 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

The critic or expert is able to save the reader the difficult labor 
of choosing among those works that have survived or are worthy to 
survive in the evolutionary struggle. 

La post6rite ; de plus en plus, me parait ressembler a un voyageur presse 
qui fait sa malle, et qui ne peut y faire entrer qu'un petit nombre de volumes 
choisis. Critique, qui avez Phonneur d'etre pour la posterite du moment un 
nomenclateur et un secretaire, 1 et, s'il se peut, un bibliothecaire de confiance, 
dites-lui bien vite le titre de ces volumes qui meritent que Ton s'en souvienne,- 
et qu'on les lise; hatez-vous! le convoi s'apprete, deja la machine chauffe, 
la vapeur fume, notre voyageur n'a qu'un instant. 2 

The critic is finally a sentinel, an outpost on the lookout for new 
talents, and to his sharpened critical senses he must add a certain gift 
of divination, that he may perceive promise when fulfilment is still far off. 

II est des organisations delicates ... qui sentent vingt-quatre heures a 
l'avance les changements de temps, qui les devinent en quelque sorte; tel 
doit £tre Fesprit du critique par rapport au jugement du public. II faut que 
sa montre avance de cinq minutes au moins sur le cadran de THotel-de-Ville. 3 

Yet this does not mean that the critic is in any sense a prophet or a 
soothsayer: "Le critique n'a pas le don de deviner le talent cache qui 
n'a pas encore jailli." 4 

The critic further serves the reader by virtue of the fact that he is 
able as a scholar and an expert to sum up and condense a book or a 
larger corpus of material so as to convey to the reader knowledge that 
the latter could never gather for himself. The critic constitutes himself 
a guide through a difficult and inaccessible region: "Rien n'est agreable 
et piquant comme un guide familier dans des epoques lointaines. On 
y apprend d'une maniere facile mille choses nouvelles; les reflexions 
naissent a chaque pas d'elles — memes," 5 etc. His duty to the reader may 
be merely that of informing him, the discharge of his office of scholar; 
it may be pedagogical or editorial, as when he sums up, interprets, 
rearranges, or otherwise prepares the material for the mental digestion 

1 Elsewhere he uses this same phrase about the critic, "Le critique n'est que le 
secretaire du public, mais un secretaire qui n'attend pas qu'on lui dicte, et qui devine, 
qui demele et r£dige chaque matin, la pensee de tout le monde" (Causeries du lundi, 
If 373). 

2 Ibid., IV, 515. Cf. also, where he uses this same figure of the reader resembling 
a traveler, ibid., VII, 89, and Voltaire's "on ne va pas a la posterit6 avec de si gros 
bagages." 

3 Portraits contemporains, V, 457. 

* Cahiers, p. 143. s Causeries du lundi, VIII, 495. 



THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM 23 

of the reader; 1 or psychosocial, as when he prepares the mind of the 
reader for the reception of what literature has to give him. 2 "Mais 
les hommes pour la plupart ne savent pas eux-memes quel jugement 
porter; ils ont besoin d'une marque exterieure qui les rassure." 3 

The critic has an unmistakable duty in those cases, by no means 
rare, where he becomes possessed of important information or vital 
points of view which are not common property. "II me semble que 
quand on sait quelque chose de particulier et d'un peu nouveau sur 
Racine, on n'est pas libre de le garder pour soi et qu'on le doit a tous." 4 
This is particularly true if it happens, as it often does, that the important 
knowledge lies imbedded in some obscure or esoteric place, difficult 
of access to the popular reader, so that to his social obligation the critic 
must add a pedagogical or exegetical duty. s 

But the reader, and especially the public of readers, may be indif- 
ferent or even hostile to the critic and anything but grateful for his 
assistance. Sainte-Beuve was frequently deeply discouraged by this — 
so deeply that he has words in which he questions the value of his art: 
"II n'est pas invitant de s'aller engager dans un long combat, dans une 
joute inegale, non-seulement avec la certitude d'etre finalement vaincu, 
mais de plus avec l'assurance qu'on sera declare inferieur a tous les 
moments du duel." 6 In such moods he bitterly resented the refusal 
of the public to be guided, as well as the arrogant assumption of the 
chance ignoramus, who considers himself as good a judge of literature as 
the trained expert. 7 It must have been in some such mood that he wrote 
the essay "De Feletz et de la critique litteraire sous l'empire," 8 which 
has been made so much of by students as a repudiation by Sainte-Beuve 

1 This informational function he himself exercises, for example, in the case of the 
Provengal poet Jasmin. " II y a toute une moiti6 de la France qui rirait si nous avions 
la pretention de lui apprendre ce que c'est que Jasmin, ... mais il y a une autre 
moitie ... qui a besoin ... qu'on lui rappelle ce qui n'est pas sorti de son sein," etc. 
(Causeries du lundi, IV, 309) . 

1 " Ce n'est pas une rehabilitation que je viens tenter, mais il est bon de mettre 
des idees exactes sous de certains noms qui reviennent souvent" (ibid., IV, 121). 
He is going to speak again of Saint-Simon's Memoires. "II ne peut etre question ici 
que de rappeler et de fixer avec nettete quelques-uns des points principaux acquis 
d6sormais et incontestables " (ibid., XV, 423). " Je voulais seulement, sur ce terrain 
litteraire qui est neutre ... amener les uns et les autres a £tre plus justes," etc. 
(Nouveaux lundis, I, 81). 

3 Cahiers, p. 72. 6 Nouveaux lundis, V, 334. 

4 Nouveaux lundis, X, 356. 7 Ibid., p. 335. 

s See also p. 76. 8 Causeries du lundi, I, 373. 



24 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

of his office as critic. 1 He indubitably takes in this essay a low view of 
his art and calling. He goes so far as to say that criticism of itself can 
do nothing unless the public is already friendly, that the critic is merely 
the secretary of the public, divining what the public thinks or desires 
and giving it that. Nevertheless this is not his normal doctrine, rather 
a mere boutade written in an hour of discouragement and disgust. 

A summary of his views of the relation of the critic to the reader 
displays these points: he gives aid and guidance in the selection of 
things worth knowing; he purveys information — knowledge and point 
of view — otherwise difficult of access; he prepares the mind of the reader 
for the reception of great works; he regrets and resents the slowness 
of the untrained reader to accept the guidance of the expert. 

Finally the function of criticism is to afford a medium for the crea- 
tive faculty of the critic himself, to constitute that opportunity of 
self-expression indispensable for the born critic. Central in Sainte- 
Beuve's critical theory was the doctrine that there is a native critical 
faculty. So important is this doctrine that it will have to be approached 
from several sides within this dissertation. Criticism, he says, is a 
temperamental thing, a disposition of the mind, not a profession. 2 He 
himself could not avoid being a critic; it was his call, his daemon. 
"Comment ai-je eu des mon enfance une vocation litteraire si pro- 
noncee?" His bent was, he feels, an inheritance from his father and 
"des l'enfance j'aimais les livres, les notices litteraires, les beaux extraits 
des auteurs." 3 He tried to be a poet but his instinct was stronger than 
his will or his ambition. Though he at first regretted his failure as 
poet, as he grew older he became more and more convinced that he was 
essentially and by nature a critic: 

A mes yeux, il n'est point d'honneur plus grand pour une intelligence 
humaine que de saisir et d'embrasser l'ensemble de verites qui constituent les 
lois des nombres et des mondes. Apres la gloire de faire des decouverts ... il 
n'est rien de plus honorable, que de se rendre compte directement de ces 
decouvertes ... et de les pleinement comprendre. 4 

This particular passage he writes apropos of the pleasure he derives 
from penetrating the thoughts and sympathizing in the discoveries of 
the astronomer Arago; and he receives the same delight always in the 

1 Gayley and Scott, Literary Criticism, p. 35. 

a This is discussed more fully infra, "The Qualifications of the Critic." 

3 Cahiers, p. 64. 

* Nouveaux lundis, II, 92. 



THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM 25 

presence of masterpieces of pure literature. When asked why he 
delighted to study the women of the past, he replies: 

Plaisir dSsinteresse* de la curiosite critique! derniere jouissance de ceux 
qui ont beaucoup vecu dans leur chambre, qui ont beaucoup lu et peu agi! 
Quoi de plus doux et de plus innocent, en effet, que de s'occuper ... d'une 
existence disparue, de ressaisir une figure nette et distincte dans le passe ... 
de donner tous ses soins, pour la recomposer et la montrer aux autres, etc. 1 

No one who realizes the full significance of such a statement, remembering 
that it is the voice of a born and predestined critic, could indorse for a 
moment Balzac's phrase applied to Sainte-Beuve, poete avorti. 

As a sort of corollary of the doctrine that criticism is self-expression, 
the free and spontaneous activity of a native impulse, Sainte-Beuve is 
led to declare that criticism is itself a creative activity: "La critique, 
telle ... que je voudrais la pratiquer est une invention et une creation 
perpetuelle." 2 He explains what he means by the phrase creation 
perpetuelle: 

Le plus beau r61e pour le critique c'est quand il ne se tient pas uniquement 
sur la defensive, et que, denoncant les faux succes il ne sait pas moins discerner 
et ... premouvoir les legitimes. C'est pour cela qu'il y a dans le critique un 
poete; le poete a le sentiment plus vif des beautes, il hesite moins a les main- 
tenir. 3 

The critic is a creator also in the sense that, taking a passage or a citation 
from his author as a point of departure, he discovers beauty and signifi- 
cance, present only by implication or even by mere possibility, which 
it may not have occurred to the author to utter. 4 It is clear that Sainte- 
Beuve anticipated in many respects the more modern ideas of creative 
criticism. 

"Depuis que la critique est nee ... elle n'aime guere les oeuvres de 
poesie entourees d'une parfaite lumiere et definitives; elle n'en a que 
faire. Le vague, l'obscur, le difficile, s'ils se combinent avec quelque 
grandeur, sont plutot son fait." 5 Because, then, the critic can explain, 
can create, can think his own thoughts within the horizon of the book: 

Nos idees sur les poetes ont, en effet, change presque entierement, depuis 
quelques annees ... il s'agit du fond meme ... et des principes habituels 
en vertu desquels on sent et Ton est affecte. ... Autrefois, durant la periode 
litteraire reguliere, elite classique, on estimait le meilleur poete celui qui avait 
compose Pceuvre la plus parfaite, le plus beau poeme, le plus clair, le plus 

« IbU., IX, 434. 

a Portraits LitUraires, III, 546. 4 Causeries du lundi, III, 305. 

3 Chateaubriand, II, 116. s Nouveaux lundis, X, 391. 



26 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

agreable a. lire. ... Aujourd'hui on veut autre chose. Le plus grand poete 
pour nous est celui qui, dans ses oeuvres, a donne le plus a imaginer et a rever 
a son lecteur. ... Le plus grand poete n'est pas celui qui a le mieux fait; c'est 
celui qui suggere le plus ... il ne lui (la critique) deplait pas de sentir qu'elle 
entre pour sa part dans une creation. 1 

Diderot set the example in France of this creative and interpretative 
criticism. It was said of him that he never met a wicked man or read a 
bad book. "Car si le livre etait mauvais, il le refaisait, et il imputait, 
sans y songer, a Pauteur quelques unes de ses propres inventions a lui 
meme. II trouvait de Tor dans le creuset, comme l'alchimiste, parcequ'il 
Py avait mis." 2 

The creative activities of the critic find scope and occasion also in 
presenting the masterpieces of the classics; there is here legitimate need 
for imaginative interpretation, and the classics must be, as it were, 
retranslated into the consciousness of each new generation. Sainte- 
Beuve in a very illuminating passage indicates the province and limita- 
tions of such creative writing. He is speaking of Don Quixote: 

Certes je suis trop critique pour nier les droits de la critique. On peut de 
loin, a. distance, et en envisageant Pensemble d'une ceuvre, en embrassant 
d'un coup d'ceil les consequences qu'elle a eues, ... on peut y reconnaitre autre 
chose et plus que Pauteur tout le premier n'etait tente d'y voir, et plus, certaine- 
ment, qu'il n'a songe a y mettre. L'lliad et VOdysste signifient et reprS- 
sentent pour nous assurement plus de faits et d'idees a la fois que pour les 
chantres homeriques qui les ont r6citees par branches, et pour ces populations 
primitives qui les ont entendues. Mais cette part legitime de pensees et de 
reflexions qu'ajoute incessamment Pesprit humain aux monuments de son 
heritage intellectuel, cette plus-value croissante qui a pourtant ses limites, 
doit etre soigneusement distinguee de Pceuvre elle meme en soi, bien que celle-ci 
la porte et en soit le fond. Elle ne doit point surtout etre imputee et pretee a 
Pauteur primitif par une confusion de vues et une projection illusoire de per- 
spective. Sachons bien que nous devenons, a la longue, des cooperateurs, des 
demi-createurs dans ces types consacr6s, qui, une fois livres a Padmiration, se 
traduisent et se transforment incessamment. Sachons que nous y ajoutons, 
de notre chef, des intentions que Pauteur n'a jamais eues, comme par compen- 
sation de toutes celles qu'il a eues en effet, et qui nous echappent. 3 

The critic is demi-createur and cooperateur by virtue of the fact that 
he is constantly reinterpreting masterpieces in the light of new ideas, 
stating universal ideas in terms of the modern consciousness, bringing 
out meanings implicit in the material but of which the original author was 
scarcely conscious, and continually re-thinking the material in order 

1 Nouveaux lundis, X, 390. 

3 Causeries du lundi, III, 300. * Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 36. 



THE FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM 27 

to disclose all that the author meant to put into it. "La critique a 
fort raisonne de nos jours et de tout temps sur la pensee fondamentale 
qui se montre ou se derobe dans Don Quichotte, et il n'en pouvait etre 
autrement; c'etait son droit. Que serait la critique si elle ne raisonnait 
pas?" 1 

Would it not be fair to say that Sainte-Beuve's ideas of the function 
of criticism may, in general, be summed up in the two passages which 
follow? "Renouveler les choses connues, vulgariser les choses neuves: 
un bon programme pour un critique." 2 "La critique pour moi ... c'est 
le plaisir de connaitre les esprits, non de les regenter." 3 

To conclude, however, more in detail and in the order of the material 
offered in this section, the functions of criticism in Sainte-Beuve's 
view are: (1) to seek the truth, and as a pendant to this (2) to destroy 
false traditions and legends, to overturn fallacious and fictitious stand- 
ards, to expose illusory ideals and sentiments; (3) to serve society 
morally and artistically by cultivating taste and by maintaining the 
right traditions; (4) to serve the author by actual reproof and advice, 
by enhancing his reputation, by introducing him to an audience, and 
if he be dead by rehabilitating him if he is undeservedly forgotten; 
(5) to serve the reader and the reading public by giving them actual 
information and points of view they could not get for themselves, 
by selecting for them their reading or guiding them in a wise selection, 
by preparing their minds for the reception of what is good; (6) and to 
satisfy the passion of the critical genius for self-expression and artistic 
creation. 

1 Ibid., p. 29. 

a Causeries du lundi, XI, 512. 3 Cahiers, p. 11. 



III. SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM 

A man of Sainte-Beuve's wide outlook and knowledge of his intel- 
lectual age, of his keen curiosity, could not have failed to feel the per- 
vading scientific movement of his century. As a matter of fact, he was 
profoundly interested in it and felt that its methods and principles 
in the largest and most detailed observation of facts, its emphasis on 
heredity, environment, evolution, and on new aspects of causation must 
all be applied in criticism. He had himself studied medicine, and he 
said of his training in this subject: "It is to this [study of medicine] 
that I owe the philosophical spirit, the love of precision and of physio- 
logical reality, and whatever good methodical procedure my writings, 
even my literary writings, possess!" 1 While we see in this some exag- 
geration of the value of his studies in medicine, we may well believe that 
they helped to enhance in him instincts, powers, and habits that devel- 
oped his scientific, "physiological" criticism. 

Sainte-Beuve was aware that in adopting certain points of view of 
science he was not conforming to the historic and conventional French 
technique of literary criticism; he was quite aware that he was breaking 
with the Boileau-La Harpe tradition, and directing his art into paths 
which these masters could not have trodden. He intended to make 
literary criticism as nearly a science as could be; he endeavored to base 
his opinions on facts and, as far as possible, to determine the exact and 
efficient causes of his phenomena, all in consonance with what he 
regarded as the modern spirit: 

Nous sommes deja si loin de ces temps (ceux de Louis XIV), que, pour 
bien juger d'un homme, d'un auteur qui y a vecu, il ne suffit pas toujours de 
lire ses productions, il faut encore les revoir en place, recomposer l'ensemble 
de l'epoque et l'existence entiere du personnage. 2 

He thinks, it appears, that it is no longer sufficient, having read a 
book, to deliver one's verdict on it as good or bad on the strength of 
one's internal response alone — things are not the same in this scientific 
age as in other times — the unsupported and undefended conclusions of 
taste have lost authority; we must have more than opinions; we must 
have facts and explanations. 

1 Harper, Sainte-Beuve, p. 72. 

2 Causeries du lundi, I, 453. 

28 



SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM 29 

La temperature morale n'est plus la mSme; le climat des esprits est en 
train de changer. D'ou je conclus, ... que la litterature critique se trouve en 
presence d'un monde nouveau ... il y a n6cessite pour elle de se renouveler 
d'ailleurs. ... Plusiers ecrivains, ... ont done senti le besoin de varier et 
d'accroitre leurs moyens, de perfectionner leurs instruments ... afin de pouvoir 
lutter avec les autres arts 1 rivaux et pour satisfaire a cette exigence de plus 
en plus positive des lecteurs qui veulent en tout des resultats. De la Pidee 
qui est graduellement venue de ne plus s'en tenir exclusivement a ce qu'on 
appelait la critique du gout, de creuser plus en avant qu'on n'avait fait encore 
dans le sens de la critique historique, et aussi d'y joindre tout ce que pourrait 
fournir d'elements ou d'inductions la critique dite naturelle ou physiologique. 2 

Here the word is uttered! La critique naturelle ou physiologique 
must be united with the critique historique and the critique de gout pur 
to make the new synthetic art of the new age. It is not the office of 
the newly added elements to supplant the old, but to give the new 
combination a firm foundation, to make of it a science. 3 It is noticeable 
that Sainte-Beuve never excludes taste from a share in his judgment; 
but he reduces it from the position of supreme arbiter to that of one of 
a tribunal of arbiters. 

The first step in the critical process is to gather the facts, all the 
facts, about an author and his book. Then on the basis of these facts 
with the aid of our own literary feeling we may form and deliver an 
opinion. Since we must have the aid of this personal literary feeling, 
criticism cannot ever be called a pure science but must retain elements 
of art and demands the service of an artist. 4 Nevertheless, Sainte- 
Beuve warns us repeatedly that this artist must bring to bear on his 
subject-matter as much of scientific method as he can; he must reduce 
the margin of the operation of personal taste. Such a worker using 
such a system would be the ideal critic. "II y a lieu plus que jamais 
aux jugements qui tiennent au vrai gout, mais il ne s'agit plus de venir 
porter des jugements de rhetorique. Aujourd'hui l'histoire litteraire 
se fait comme Phistoire naturelle, par des observations et par des col- 
lections. 5 " Out of this scientific attitude toward criticism comes his 

1 Notice, however, that here he classifies criticism as one of the arts. 
a Nouveaux lundis, IX, 69. 

'"Corneille a 6t6, dans ces dernieres ann6es, et il est plus que jamais, en ce 
moment, l'object d'une quantite de travaux qui convergent et qui fixeront dSfinitive- 
ment la critique et les jugements qu'elle doit porter sur ce pere de notre theatre. Les 
jugements de gout sont depuis longtemps gpuises et ils ne seront pas surpasses" (ibid., 
VII, 199). 

4 Cf. ibid., IX, 69; III, 67. s Portraits UtUr aires, III, 546. 



30 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

distinctive contribution to literary theory. "I am," he says elsewhere, 
" a botanist of minds " ; and he felt that his critical essays were all studies 
of specimens, of which, however, because science was not far enough 
advanced, he was not yet able to make a satisfactory classification: 

... elle [la science du moraliste] en est aujourd'hui au point ou la botanique en 
' etait avant Jussieu, et Panatomie comparee avant Cuvier, a l'etat, pour ainsi 
dire, anecdotique. Nous faisons pour notre compte de simple monographies, 
nous amassons des observations de detail; mais j'entrevois des liens, des 
rapports, et un esprit plus etendu, plus lumineux et reste fin dans le detail, 
pourra decouvrir un jour les grandes divisions naturelles qui repondent aux 
families d'esprits. 1 

In effect, this esprit plus etendu, plus lumineux will be able to make 
criticism approach the character of a natural science. 

Indeed to Sainte-Beuve a science of criticism was already emerging. 3 
The critic says that he is beginning to see "des liens, des rapports," 
and that with the wide application of the historical method the con- 
nections will become clearer. The latter half of the important article, 
"Qu'est-ce qu'un classique," 3 is devoted to making a general classifica- 
tion of the families of minds as he saw them.* It is only in modern times 
and under the influence of the spirit of scientific investigation and in the 
light of our consequently wider knowledge that classification so definite 
has become possible or conceivable. 

It was Chateaubriand who inaugurated in France the type of 
comparative-historical criticism, and he was followed by Saint-Marc 
Girardin and others. 5 Of his own method Sainte-Beuve says: " J'aime, 
au reste, a marier ces productions, par quelque cote parentes, bien 
plutot qu'a les opposer: La Bible de Royaumont, le Telemaque, Rollin, 
VHombre de Mme Dacier, me paraissent aller bien ensemble pour la 
couleur." 6 This describes the comparative-historical aspect of that 
scientific criticism which Sainte-Beuve desired to found. He regards 
this point of view as a distinctive contribution of his own age. It is a 

1 Nouveaux lundis, III, 17. 

3 We are just arriving, he thinks, by the use of the historical method at a point 
where we can really judge. "Les critiques (d'autrefois) ... ne s'informaient pas 
assez a l'avance de tout ce qui pouvait donner a leur jugement des garanties d'exacti- 
tude parfaite et de veritS" (Causeries du lundi, XV, 375). 

3 Ibid., Ill, 38 ff., dating from 1850. 

4 This correspondence in ideas between the "Chateaubriand" article of 1862 
{Nouveaux lundis, III) and the "Qu'est-ce qu'un classique " article of 1850 (Causeries 
du lundi, III) is a clear indication of the unity of his thought during this period. 

5 Causeries du lundi, I, 12. 6 Ibid., IX, 491. 



SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM 



31 



step toward the explanation of an author and his book on the basis 
of fact. It will help to insure us against being made the dupe of an 
unfounded and extravagant admiration, and will save the author from 
becoming the victim of an ill-founded hostility: 

... qu'y a-t-il de plus legitime que de profiter des notions qu'on a sous la main 
pour sortir definitivement d'une certaine admiration trop textuelle a la fois 
et trop abstraite et pour ne pas se contenter meme d'une certaine description 
g6nerale d'un siecle et d'une epoque, mais pour serrer de plus pres, d'aussi 
pres que possible ... l'analyse des caracteres d'auteurs aussi bien que celle des 
productions ? x 

It is not sufficient to explain the book — one must go back of that and 
explain the author. This notion of the obligation to study the author 
behind the book is also, Sainte-Beuve says, a product of his own century. 
He traces in a sentence the history of this idea in France. Mme de Stael 
gave it currency in her De la litterature; certain of the journalist critics, 
notably those on the Globe, and later M. Villemain, follow her lead. 
Nowadays " on essaye de faire un pas de plus et toutes les fois qu'on le 
peut, d'interroger directement, d'examiner l'individu-talent dans son 
Education, dans sa culture, dans sa vie, dans ses origines." 2 

More recent critics have been more thoroughgoing than Mme de 
Stael, who merely outlined the method. Among those who followed 
on the road faintly blazed by her, Sainte-Beuve mentions Michelet, 
Renan, Taine, Eugene Heron; and he adds: "JPy suis moi-meme entre 
depuis bien des annees, et en affichant si peu d'intention systematique, 
que beaucoup de mes lecteurs ou de mes critiques ont suppose que 
j'allais purement au hasard et selon ma fantaisie." 3 He himself espe- 
cially developed the path of biographical criticism. But as he here 
unmistakably implies, he did not proceed au hasard or selon sa fantaisie; 
and, though we may find no hard-and-fast method, we shall expect to 
find, to use Taine's distinction, a definite critical procedure. 

It would seem clear from the foregoing statements chosen from many 
of like tenor that Sainte-Beuve realized the need of a scientific criticism; 
that he recognized certain aspects of it in recent and contemporary 
critics; that he outlined its aspects or qualities; that he believed him- 
self to be an exponent of it. The peculiarly "scientific" principle of his 
critical performance we now know had to do with the gathering and 
sifting of data and with the placing of the author and the book in the 
proper genus. This we shall follow in detail in this section. The more 

1 Nouveaux lundis, EX, 71. 

3 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 



32 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

peculiarly aesthetic critical activities that succeeded these naturalistic 
steps in his total process will occupy us later. 

In the article of 1862 1 on Chateaubriand Sainte-Beuve gives a detailed 
account of the side of his work we are now to study. This authoritative 
account we will follow in detail, reinforcing it with striking passages of 
confirmation or amplification from sources other than the "Chateau- 
briand." 2 As a text for the whole discussion the following passage 
might be taken: "Tout a son prix aux yeux de la critique qui sent l'art 
comme l'expression presque directe de la nature et de la vie." 3 Thus 
Sainte-Beuve sees his first task in finding out all he can about life, that 
life of which the book is the living expression. We shall try to repro- 
duce in our presentation of Sainte-Beuve's analysis the thoroughly 
logical order of his procedure. 

First, he says the work of art cannot be separated from its author — 
"tel arbre, tel fruit" — consequently the first requirement toward the 
appreciation of a book is the understanding of its author. 4 One may like 
or dislike a book, but one cannot fairly and finally judge it without a 
knowledge of its sources — the author and his life. Inevitably, then, the 
•study of literature leads to the study of psychology. 5 There are, of 
course, cases where the complete study of an author is impossible — the 
great writers of antiquity, for example, who appear to us as titanic 
torsos and scattered limbs, and whom therefore we can only partially 
know. Even in this case, however, we must take all the more pains to 
gather all that we can lay our hands on in the way of facts. In the case 
of the moderns we can, of course, get at the essential circumstances of 
their lives and environment. "La biographie bien comprise et bien 
maniee est un instrument sur pour initier a l'histoire des hommes et des 
temps, meme les plus eloignes de nous." 6 Sainte-Beuve gives in the 
following passage an impressive summary of his scientific-biographical 
method: 

1 Nouveaux lundis, III, 15 S. 

3 There are several articles which are full of this naturalistic criticism and from 
which the most of the supporting quotations are taken. They are: (a) "De la 
tradition en litterature," Causeries du lundi, XV (1858), 2; (b) article on Deschanel's 
Essai de critique naturelle in Nouveaux lundis, IX, 62 ff.; (c) on Taine's Histoirede la 
• literature anglaise in Nouveaux lundis, VIII (1864). Only items from Nouveaux lundis, 
III, 15 ff., come from the article "Chateaubriand." 

3 Nouveaux lundis, II, 289. 

4 "Les defauts et les qualites du livre s'expliquent tres-bien par la mani&re dont 
■il fut compose, et par la nature d'esprit de l'ecrivain" (Causeries du lundi, \TI, 207). 

s "L'etude morale," as he often calls it. 6 Causeries du lundi, I, 289. 



SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM 33 

"Si Ton connaissait bien la race (physiologiquement), on aurait un 
grand jour sur la qualite secrete et essentielle des esprits; mais le plus 
sou vent la race est obscure et derobee." 1 

It is clear, then, that he would start with the most fundamental 
things, studying the writer first "dans son pays natal, dans sa race." 
It need not be more than mentioned that Sainte-Beuve uses the term 
"race" to designate a national, not an ethnical, stock, 3 although there 
seems to be some lack of clarity on this point in his thinking. The 
adjectives he uses are purely national, even regional — the English race, 
the French, the Italian, even the Breton and Gascon — yet he also states 
that if we know a race physiologically we could determine mental char- 
acteristics, a statement which seems to concern an ethnic unit. But 
Sainte-Beuve did not, to the best of my belief, make any, certainly not 
a consistent distinction between racial and national. The race of a 
writer, as he used the word race, will account, on a purely physical, 
even physiological, basis, for many of his essential qualities. A French- 
man qud Frenchman has certain characteristics that predetermine in 
him many fundamental qualities as writer, as reader, and as critic. 3 
This element of race is often hidden and elusive, "une racine obscure 
et derobee"; nevertheless we must keep in mind the genius of each 
country : 

Ne demandons pas tout a fait a chaque pays les memes procedes; Virgile 
nous l'a dit, Nee ver\o terrae ferre omnes omnia possunt. Chaque terroir 
a son fruit auquel il se complait. ... Assemblons, s'il se peut, tous les fruits 
dans notre collecte finale, et n'en ecartons aucun; mais que chaque nation 
conserve, dans cette emulation commune, le coin de genie qui lui est propre. 4 

Another fundamental thing of equal importance with his race in 
determining and conditioning an author is his epoch. "Nul exemple," 
he says of Cervantes, "ne me parait plus propre a montrer a quel point 
les hommes meme energiques, de trempe et de volonte sont assujettis et 
soumis au milieu ou ils vivent," etc. 5 Only certain ages could have 
produced certain books and they could have produced no other kind 
of books. So "pour bien juger des hommes de ce temps ... il importe ... 

1 Cahiers, p. 70. 

3 "Les Francais, a travers toutes les formes de gouvernment et de society qu'ils 
traversent, continuent, dit-on, d'etre les memes, d'offrir les memes traits principaux 
de caractere" (Causeries du lundi, VII, 1). 

3 Mme Necker is not French, and so he says it is hard to understand and treat 
of her (ibid., IV, 173). 

4 Nouveaux lundis, XI, 182. s Ibid., VIII, 38. 



34 SAINTErBEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

de se bien rendre compte du courant general, immense, qui entrainait 
alors la nation"; 1 for, "Oui, tot ou tard le milieu s'impose! telle scene, 
tels acteurs ! " 2 Since, then, certain men and certain ideas are the product 
of certain centuries we must,as one of the first steps, study these centuries. 

After indicating these steps, the study of the author's race and 
native country, and of his epoch, Sainte-Beuve makes a digression, 3 in 
which occur more than one of those strange shifts of focus often found in 
his thinking. He seems to be overtaken by a misgiving that what he 
has said is too strong or too narrow. In many cases these misgivings 
take the form of allowances or reservations more or less sweeping; in 
other cases they amount to irreconcilable contradictions. The digres- 
sion that we have now come to, in the Chateaubriand article, is to the 
effect that criticism, no matter how exact it may be, will in some respects 
always remain an art, though perhaps only temporarily not a science. 
With the lapse of time and the exercise of limitless patience, after vast 
amounts of constatation, of just observing and recording facts, the Jussieu 
of physiological criticism may arrive — he who may be able to determine 
with completeness and exactness the families of intellects and the prin- 
ciples for their study. We are in a stage of the mere recording of facts; 
only at some later day will come the person who will definitely develop 
criticism into a science. 

Moreover — another misgiving — there must always be in criticism 
some admixture of art because the doctrine of causation will always break 
down in the presence of mind, because in their intellectual activities 
men possess ce qu'on nomme la liberie, defying analysis and defeating 
expectation. No matter how logically we have constructed our chain 
of cause and effect, this liberie may break it. This constitutes the factor 
of individuality, and no closeness or fulness of study of his ancestry and 
surroundings, of his race, milieu et moment can finally account for a 
man's genius, for that something in him which no other man, though he 

1 Causeries du lundi, VIII, 334. Cf. "on a besoin a. chaque instant, quand on 
6tudie aujourd'hui Rollin, de se reporter a cette situation d'alentour," etc. (ibid., VI, 
264). "Pour bien apprecier et gouter, comme je le fais, cette correspondance de 
Sismondi, il faut absolument se deplacer un peu, se figurer la situation des 
correspondants telle qu'elle etait, les revoir dans leur monde et a leur point de vue" 
(Nouveaux lundis, VI, 49). See also Causeries du lundi, IV, 540; VIII, 116. 

2 Nouveaux lundis, IX, 323. A man cannot with impunity be different from the 
essential product of his age. "C'est un malheur en tout cas pour un homme d'esprit 
et de talent de prendre ainsi a. contre-sens l'epoque dont il est contemporain, et le 
regne dont il serait un serviteur naturel et distingue^' (Causeries du lundi, X, 399). 

3 Nouveaux lundis, III, 17. 



SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM 35 

come out of the same circumstances of time and place, possesses. At 
this point, says Sainte-Beuve elsewhere, begins the weakening of 
la critique physiologique: 

Quelque soin qu'on mette a penetrer ou a expliquer le sens des oeuvres, ... 
il y aura toujours une certaine partie inexpliquee, inexplicable, celle en quoi 
consiste le don individuel du genie; et bien que ce genie evidemment n'opere 
point en l'air ni dans le vide, qu'il soit et qu'il doive etre dans un rapport 
exacte avec les conditions de tout genre ... on aura toujours une place tres 
suflisante ... ou loger ce principal ressort, ce moteur inconnu, le centre et le 
foyer de l'inspiration superieure, ou de la volonte, la monade inexprimable. 1 

The genius, the irreducible personality of an author, cannot be perceived 
by the intellect, nor explained by any analytical process; it must be 
felt by the critical faculty, itself an irreducible intuition. The critic 
who has not this faculty cannot write a truly discerning work — la monade 
inexprimable escapes him. In this quarter, Sainte-Beuve says in another 
place, we will find the failure of Taine's Histoire de la litterature anglaise, 
which, though a great book, is not trustworthy as literary criticism 
because Taine does not succeed in getting at the distinctive qualities 
of genius, trying as he does to explain all the men and the whole man 
merely on the basis of race, milieu, et moment? Every author, even 
when not a great genius, is unique in the world. "La nature n'a fait 
qu'une fois un Shakespeare." 3 In another place Sainte-Beuve com- 
pares the mind of the race to a great river in an image whose details 
suggest unmistakably that he was a scientific thinker, a Darwinian, a 
pre-Bergsonian, as one might say, in his doctrine of the flux. But he 
is careful to point out certain features in which the analogy between the 
river and human history fails: 

"L'esprit humain," dites-vous, "coule avec les evenements comme un 
fleuve" ... je dirai hardiment non en ce sens qu'a la difference d'un fleuve 
l'esprit humain n'est point compose d'une quantite de gouttes semblables. II y 
distinction de qualite dans bien des gouttes. ... Et en general, il n'est qu'une 
ame, une forme particuliere d'esprit pour faire tel ou tel chef-d'ceuvre. ... 
Supposez un grand talent de moins, supposez le moule , ou mieux le miroir 
magique d'un seul vrai poete brise dans le berceau a sa naissance, il ne s'en 
rencontrera plus jamais un autre qui soit exactement le meme ni qui en 
tienne lieu. II n'y a de chaque vrai poete qu'un exemplaire. 4 

1 Ibid., DC, 70. 3 Ibid., VIII, 66 ff. 

3 Ibid., Ill, 230. He means this not to contradict but to supplement his 
family-of-minds theory. 

*Ibid., VIII, 86. 



36 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

It is the affair of the critic to get at this unique personality — "grain of 
originality." In view of the fact that genius transcends the laws of 
inheritance and environment and defies the ordinary working of causa- 
tion, and the fact that the critical faculty is also a somewhat personal 
and unaccountable gift, criticism, thinks Sainte-Beuve in the Cahiers, 
must always remain an art, documented, to be sure, and based on scien- 
tific principles, but in the main an art, demanding the services of a 
talent peculiar in the critic, as poetry demands a poet and philosophy a 
philosopher. The ideal critic Sainte-Beuve thus describes: 

... quelqu'un qui ait ce genre d'esprit,cette facilite pour entendre lesgroupes, 
les families litteraires, qui les distingue presqu'a premiere vue; qui en saisisse 
l'esprit et la vie; dont ce soit veritablement la vocation; quelqu'un de propre 
a etre un bon naturaliste dans ce champ si vaste des esprits. 1 

Thus far the digression in the Chateaubriand article; Sainte-Beuve 
now resumes his main theme. The studies in the race, the epoch, and in 
the larger natural and social background, while of essential impor- 
tance, make, as it were, the frame for the portrait of the man, which the 
critic now proceeds to paint. 

The next step, then, is to look into his immediate surroundings, the 
"purely biographical relationships." 

II faut etudier tout individu distingue, dans la mere, dans la sceur, dans 
le frere, dans les enfants meme, il s'y retrouve des lineaments essentiels qui 
sont sou vent masques dans celui qui les combine en lui et les rassemble ... 
le fond se retrouve plus a nu et a l'etat simple dans les parents. 2 

In his immediate family are to be found many of the elements that 
enter into the great man, to be separated out and shown "plus a, nu et a 
l'etat simple." 3 One must then study his parents, more particularly 
his mother ("all great men," says Sainte-Beuve, "have had remark- 
able mothers"); one must look at his sisters, his brothers, and lastly 
at his children. 4 Having thus completed the circle of kinship, one takes 
up the life of the man himself, his childhood, his education, and then — a 
matter of supreme importance — "le premier milieu, le premier groupe 

1 Cahiers, p. 70. 

3 Ibid. But he contradicts his own theory when he refuses to follow Michelet 
in studying the father and mother of Le Due de Bourgogne, saying: "Les lois qui 
president aux transmissions hSreditaires sont a peine entrevues, bien loin d'etre de 
tout point Sclaircies; le seront-elles jamais?" (Nouveaux lundis, II, 116). 

3 Unless otherwise indicated, these ideas are from the article "Chateaubriand," 
Nouveaux lundis, III, 18 ff. 

* Ibid., Ill, ax. 



SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM 37 

d'amis et de contemporains," which he frequented, among which he 
first found himself, from the midst of which he brought forth the first 
blossom of his talent. Every great writer retains to the end of his career 
the records of these early associations; the friends of that period are 
likely to remain the friends of a lifetime; the enemies, his lifelong 
enemies. This first group to which the youthful author is likely to 
belong (although "les tres grands individus se passent de groupe") is 
not a fraternity or any other formal association; it is "l'association 
naturelle, et comme spontane de jeunes esprits et de jeunes talents non 
pas precisement semblables et de la meme famille, mais de la m£me 
volee, du meme printemps, eclos sous le meme astre, et qui se sentent 
nes avec des varietes de gout et de vocation, pour une ceuvre commune." 1 
Such a groupe was that of Boileau, La Fontaine, and Moliere; such that 
of the first Romantic Cenacle; another was the critical circle that 
gathered around Jeffrey and the Edinburgh Review; Sainte-Beuve names 
other similar groups. 

At this point in the "Chateaubriand" article occurs another digres- 
sion to this effect: When the critic examines a work in the light of facts 
of this nature, when, in the words of Sainte-Beuve, "he becomes a disciple 
of Bacon in literary history," he is not so likely to be taken in, admirer 
de cote, and inventer des beautes a faux, as he is if he confines himself to 
the judgments of pure rhetoric. And yet, he adds with a characteristic 
vacillation, this sort of judgment has its place: 

II est dangereux de s 'engager trop avant dans ces minuties d'examen 
interlineaire [he has just been criticizing in detail the style of Bossuet] et d'en 
pretendre rien conclure sur les procedes du genie; il y faudrait, en tout cas 
apporter un tact que tout le monde n'a pas. Tout grammairien n'est pas un 
critique. 3 

Here the fair implication is that, though dangerous, such criticism is 
legitimate and needful. In another passage we find this: "Ce genre 
de critique de detail me plait peu — mais ..." and he proceeds with 
a veritable orgy of purely rhetorical criticism. 3 "Je ne renonce pas a 
QuintiUien, je le circonscris," 4 he writes, meaning that he does not dis- 
approve of the criticizing of style and rhetoric but that he rather limits 
its exercise and gives it a secondary place. As a matter of fact Sainte- 
Beuve placed more emphasis on purely aesthetic criticism than these 
passages would lead us to suppose, as will appear in the section of this 

1 Ibid., p. 21. 3 ibid., VII, 358. 

3 Ibid., II, 338. * Ibid., Ill, 24. 



38 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

dissertation that deals with that side of his thought. In a measure 
he continues the French tradition of criticism which before the nineteenth 
century had been mainly rhetorical and stylistic. 

Again Sainte-Beuve takes up the thread of his main discussion: 
We have made our study, he says, of the young author's groupe. The 
next step that will greatly reward us is to study him at the propitious 
moment of his first success; this takes him before he shall have acquired 
any mannerisms or alien peculiarities, when his talent is at its simplest. 
The second auspicious moment — a very instructive one for criticism — 
is "l'heure ou il se gate, ou il se corrompt, ou il dechoit, ou il devie." 1 
At this time the excess of the writer's virtue, the exaggeration of his 
excellence becomes a fault, and yet through its very abuse one may 
discover his peculiar merit. This moment of initial dissolution marks 
the end of a career, and it is well for an author to realize that he is 
declining. A normal career is fifteen years, though some men extend 
their successful activities through twice that period. 

We must study our author, man or woman, not only mentally but 
physically, even physiologically, and this study will generally yield 
us explanations of things otherwise inexplicable. 2 Concerning his pri- 
vate life we must ask questions, some of which at first blush seem 
impertinent in both senses of the word: 

Que pensait-il en religion? ... Comment etait-il affecte" du spectacle de 
la nature ? Comment se comportait-il sur l'article des femmes, de l'argent, ... 
£tait-il riche? etait-il pauvre? Quel etait son regime? Quelle Stait sa 
maniere journaliere de vivre. ?3 ... Enfin quel etait son vice ou son faible ? tout 
homme en a un.4 

"When you have to criticize a woman," he says, "even a model of 
saintliness, two or three inevitable questions present themselves: Was 

1 Nouveaux lundis, III, 26. 

3 "Ce n'est plus par la logique, par l'induction, par la transformation progressive 
des idees qu'on peut expliquer les variations de l'abb^ de La Mennais. ... D y a eu en lui 
solution de continuity dans la region de l'intelligence; et c'est par la physiologie, par 
le temperament qu'il le faut expliquer" (Causeries du lundi, XI [1836J, 450). Sainte- 
Beuve remained of this opinion, though he wrote this passage early. 

3 Taine has given a description of the daily life of Pope. "Ce n'est pas moi," 
says Sainte-Beuve, "qui blamerai un critique de nous indiquer, meme avec d6tail, 
la physiologie de son auteur, et son degr6 de bonne ou mauvaise sant£, influant cer- 
tainement sur son moral et sur son talent," etc. (Nouveaux lundis, VTEI, 105). 

4 Ibid., Ill, 28. This theory of the essential vice is an important and recurring 
idea with Sainte-Beuve. Cf. "Nous avons tous un faible et un travers, et ce travers ..., 
tres sensible dans notre personne, se reproduit dans nos ecrits," etc. (ibid., 
p. 102). 



SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM 



39 



she pretty? Did she ever fall in love? What was the determining 
motive of her conversion?" 1 

The answers to these and other questions like them would enable 
the critic to see his author in the circumstances that led him to write 
as he did. "Pour bien juger Guy Patin il le faut voir en son cadre, en 
sa maison, dans son £tude, ou cabinet." 3 

Inevitably the critic will go on to seek light on the author's per- 
sonality and character "dans leurs livres d'abord et aussi dans le 
temoignage des contemporains dignes de foi." 3 Out of this practice 
of taking the evidence of contemporaries grew what one might term the 
anecdotal habit of Sainte-Beuve, of the dangers of which as well as of 
whose service he was quite aware. 4 Once this habit is acquired one is 
likely, he says, to degenerate into the telling of anecdotes for mere 
amusement, at any risk of triviality or disillusionment, at times merely 
for the gratification of an unwarranted curiosity. Sainte-Beuve claimed 
that these disillusioning, disenchanting stories, however, were serviceable, 
saving one from being made a dupe, preventing false idealization and 
idolizing. His belief in the usefulness of such material leads him into 
the recital of some anecdotes which are all but scurrilous and which 
cannot justify themselves by the light that they throw on the subject 
in hand. 5 In his eagerness to avoid illusion and undue idealization he 
has plainly fallen into the opposite fault. 6 

The critic has made the necessary observations, has in hand all the 
necessary data. It is now the business of criticism after the analogy 
of chemistry to reduce the writer, if it be possible, to a formula. There 



1 Ibid., I, 213. 3 Causeries du lundi, VIII, 116. 

5 Nouveaux lundis, VII, 363. See also, "La literature ici (a propos de Mme 
d'Orleans) n'a autre chose a faire qu'a enregistrer les temoignages des contemporains 
et, en quelque sorte a les dScouper au milieu des pages d'autrefois" (Causeries du 
lundi, VI, 321). See also, "L'historien, lorsqu'il a pour guide dans la suite du r6cit 
un homme d'etat qui est tr£s-int6resse" dans les principales actions et qui les raconte, 
doit done, a chaque pas, s'Sclairer, s'il se peut, de temoignages diff6rents et con- 
tradictoires. Le moraliste, sans nSgliger l'occasion du controle lorsqu'elle se pr&ente, 
peut plus aisement s'en tenir aux discours memes du personnage" (ibid., VIII, 155). 

« He quotes an anecdote about Sully and adds, "Une telle anecdote, qui n'a aucun 
rapport prochain ni eloigne" avec les actes publics de Sully et qui ne saurait 6tre con- 
tr61ee, est indigne d'etre recueillie par un historien," etc. (ibid., p. 139). 

s Cf . Nouveaux lundis, V, 142. Babbitt (Masters of Modern French Criticism, 
p. 156) cites several of such anecdotes. 

6 Nouveaux lundis, III, 28; cf. also ibid., pp. 40 ff., where he says that it is wrong 
for the critic to abuse confidences. 



40 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

» 

are certain words which almost inevitably present themselves to the mind 
when a given person is to be weighed and summed up. "Tachons de 
trouver le nom caracteristique d'un chacun et qu'il porte grave 
moitie au front moitie au dedans du coeur, mais ne nous ha tons 
pas de le lui donner." 1 He has himself defined Chateaubriand as "an 
Epicurean with a Catholic imagination." "Cousin est un etourdi de 
genie." 2 " Guizot etait un grand professeur d'histoire." 3 But this is a 
very hazardous critical process. "En rassemblant ces divers faits un 
peu disparates, j'ai senti plus d'une fois combien le caractere d'un 
homme est complique, et avec quel soin on doit eviter, si l'on veut etre 
vrai, de le simplifier par systeme." 4 On this ground Sainte-Beuve 
objects to Taine's calling Shakespeare " l'imagination ou la passion pure," 
for such a definition is too extreme a simplification, too complete a 
generalization, and is not warranted by the special facts. 5 

On craint toujours, quand on generalise, d'etre trop absolu; la verite est 
complexe, et rarement peut-on, en tout ce qui est vivant ou historique, la 
resumer et la formuler d'un mot, sans qu'il faille y apporter aussitot des 
correctifs et des explications qui l'adoucissent et la modifient. 6 

This looks like a contradiction of his doctrine of the formula of the 
few necessary words. But the reconciliation is not far to seek. What 
Sainte-Beuve meant by these "appellations vraies et necessaires" was 
not mere specious epigrams, but summaries of the essential qualities 
of the particular author. Taine carried farther than Sainte-Beuve, too 
far the latter critic felt, the idea of the summarizing phrase based on 
the faculte maitresse and the caractere essentiel. 7 

When the critic has taken all those steps by virtue of which criticism 
may be called a science, and has by those steps reduced his author's 
qualities to a formula, then he is ready to file him away, though with 
qualification and reserve, in the correct pigeonhole, to place him in his 
famille d'esprits. 

The two doctrines, one implied in the " essential quality " or "master- 
passion" (the faculte maitresse) of each author, and the other in the 
great families d'esprits idea, are so basic in Sainte-Beuve's naturalistic 

1 Nouveaux lundis, HI, p. 30. 2 Cahiers, p. 18. 

3 Ibid., p. 82. For many other examples, see Cahiers, passim; Causer ies du 
lundi, XI, 441 ff. 

4 Ibid., IX, 260. 

5 Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 96. 6 Ibid., VII, 172. 

7 See Victor Giraud, Essai sur Taine, 2d ed., 1902, p. 97. 



SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM 



41 



criticism that it is not possible to avoid discussing them in some detail. 
They will be taken in reverse order. 

Sainte-Beuve says: "En histoire litteraire comme en histoire 
naturelle, il y a le groupe, 1 il y a ceux que certaines analogies rassemblent, 
et qui ont un air de famille auquel on ne se meprend pas." 2 It is these 
analogies which in the physical world determine the classification of 
specimens into the great species and genera. Sainte-Beuve believes 
that the same thing, always making the necessary reservations, may be 
done in criticism — each author being supplied with a well-devised label 
and filed with others who have the same or closely kindred character- 
istics, the whole constituting a family of minds. 

Babbitt, 3 discussing Sainte-Beuve's theory of families of minds, 
raises the question as to whether he really meant a natural family, 
determined by zoological or organic characteristics, or something more 
or less unconscious. "Would," says Babbitt, "a member of a 'natural' 
family of mystics of whom Sainte-Beuve speaks have been a mystic if 
he had lived on an island in the South Sea and had never heard of 
St. Augustine or of Christianity?" We have not, in the first place, 
any statement from Sainte-Beuve explicitly pushing his principles of 
classification this far; and in the second place there was without doubt 
in his own work a confusion at this point due to his many-sided and 
always expanding mind. Yet he says: "The day will come when the 
science of physiological observation will be on a firm basis" — "oil les 
grandes families d'esprits et leur principales divisions seront determinees 
et connues" and some day "un esprit plus etendu pourra decouvrir les 
grandes divisions naturelles qui repondent aux families d'esprits" 4 — there 
we have the word, natural division. 

We find in another place this striking passage: 

De meme que La Bruyere a peint des caracteres moraux qui font type, on 
arriverait ainsi a tracer quantite de portraits-caracteres des grands ecrivains, 
a reconnaitre leur diversite, leur parente, leurs signes eminemment distinctifs, 
a former des groupes, a repandre enfin dans cette infinie variete de la bio- 
graphie litteraire quelque chose de la vue lumineuse et de l'ordre qui preside a 
a distribution des families naturelles en botanique et en zoographie. 5 



1 It is necessary to distinguish this groupe from the groupe he speaks of earlier, by 
which he means the friends and associates of a young author, " l'association naturelle 
et comme spontanee," he calls it. Here he means groupe as species, using it as a 
biological term. 

3 Causeries du lundi, VI, 170. * Nouveaux lundis, III, 16. 

3 Babbitt, op. cit., p. 167. s Ibid., IX, 80. 



42 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

It is true that immediately he reveals the double-mindedness so 
characteristic of his thinking by saying that we shall never be able to 
handle minds precisely as we handle plants, because of the presence in the 
human mind of that sporadic or hybrid liberty which baffles the scientist. 

Yet, as mentioned by Babbitt, he speaks definitely of the natural 
family of mystics. 1 

It would seem then from these passages that in using the word 
"natural" Sainte-Beuve had in mind something that he considered 
scientific, some organic basis for arranging types of minds in groups. 

It is obvious that some of the resemblances and kinships that he 
arranges could have had nothing to do with imitation or other artificial 
influence. In the article "Qu'est-ce qu'un classique," he makes a divi- 
sion, a tentative classification of the families of minds.* A study of 
these groups will remove the question of imitation. Here are some of his 
groups: Homer, Valmiki, Vyasa, Firdousi; Solon, Hesiod, Theognis, Job, 
Salomon, Confucius, together with La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere; 
Virgil, Menander, Tibullus, Terence, Fenelon; Horace, Pope, Boileau, 
and Montaigne; La Fontaine and Voltaire. 

This family of minds created by kindred and harmonious endow- 
ments has its converse — certain men are born with mutually repellent 
qualities which drive them into hostile groups. 3 This accounts for those 
natural antipathies of which Sainte-Beuve speaks — certain people 
working in libraries hate each other for no cause or reason, but merely 
because they are of opposite natures, with native animosities. 4 He says: 
"Cela m&me, dans le detail, est assez piquant a observer; on se deteste 
quelquefois toute sa vie dans les lettres sans s'etre jamais vus. L'an- 
tagonisme des families d'esprits s'acheve ainsi de se dessiner." 5 Further- 
more, no process can enable these opposite natures to view one another 
sympathetically — Taine cannot do justice to Pope; 6 Boileau could 
never be taught to enjoy Quinault; Fontenelle to look kindly upon 

1 Port-Royal, IV, 322. 3 Babbitt, op. cit., 167. 

3 Causeries du lundi, III, 38 ff. * Nouveaux lundis, V, 452. 

5 Ibid., Ill, 32. It is interesting here to note that William James held some 
such theory of "tough and tender" minds (Pragmatism, pp. 12 ff. and 263). "We 
have a similar contrast expressed in the pair of terms 'rationalist' and 'empiricist,' 
'empiricist' meaning your lover of facts in all their crude variety, 'rationalist' 
meaning your devotee of abstract and eternal principles" (p. 9). The former are 
the tough-minded, the latter the tender-minded. 

6 Ibid., Vin, 104. 



SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM 



43 



Boileau; Joseph de Maistre to love Voltaire. 1 Sainte-Beuve confesses 
to just such an antipathy for Saint-Marc Girardin. 3 

The master-faculty of an author is the main factor in determining 
his family of minds, for it is, for the most part, his dominating quality 
which urges him to that form of self-expression which determines his 
classification. It is his temperament, his " humor" in the Jonsonian 
sense. 3 The master-passion, as Sainte-Beuve conceives it, is innate or at 
least organic. He himself, he says, was born with a passion for literature 
which he thinks was hereditary; 4 the painter Horace Vernet had such a 
call to be a painter. 5 This passion, perhaps innate, is inexorable in life 
and persists even beyond sanity. 6 At times it is even stronger than the 
otherwise all-powerful amour propre. For Sainte-Beuve was a disciple 
of La Rochefoucauld to the extent of agreeing with that cynical moralist's 
dictum that amour propre is the mainspring of all action. But he did 
recognize that there are times and circumstances in which this amour 
propre is nullified by the action of a genuinely disinterested and irre- 
sistible master-passion. 7 

In the difficult task of isolating the master-passion one can often 
obtain help from the fact that at times certain authors are likely to display 
the vice or the virtue which is the opposite of the one that dominates 
them. The astute critic, taking this peculiarity in a Pickwickian sense, 
arrives at the real master-passion. 

When one has grouped and isolated this essential principle of a man's 
nature, "Oh, alors on a la clef de tout," then one can safely permit 
himself that summary, that deduction of a formula of classification which 
Sainte-Beuve advocates. 

One is compelled to notice that Sainte-Beuve's doctrine of the faculty 
maitresse has been far too patronizingly handled by certain recent students 
of his theory, and possibly it might find no place in modern psychology; 

1 Ibid., Ill, 32. 

2 Cahiers, p. 49. On the "families of minds," cf. also Nouveaux lundis, IV, 314 ff., 
and Causeries du lundi, III, 2. 

3 Babbitt (op. cit., pp. 167 ff.) has a very good treatment of thisfaculU maitresse 
idea of Sainte-Beuve's. 

4 Cahiers, p. 64. s Nouveaux lundis, V, 43. 

6 Ibid., VIII, 129. See also Causeries du lundi, XI, 445, where the poet is com- 
pared to a lunatic with an obsession. Sainte-Beuve, in this idea, and in the passage 
(Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 129), is following the outline in part of Pope's Essay on Man, 
which he is fond of quoting. 

7 Causeries du lundi, XI, 410 ff. 



/ 



44 SAINTE-BEUVE' S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

but in considering Sainte-Beuve as a scientific critic it is a fallacy to 
condemn him in the light of science as we have it today. The term 
"pseudo-science" should not be lightly flung at him, seeing that in his 
day the science of psychology was in its cradle and the science of sociology, 
only slowly developing since then, not yet born. He did feel the appeal 
of science and he did some notable thinking under three of its great 
principles — observation, identification, and classification. 

When the critic has finally devised his formula for an author and has 
classified him, it is now his affair to expand the sphere of his investiga- 
tion; he must therefore study his subject's personal relations with the 
world, his friends and particularly his enemies, passing on, then, to his 
followers and disciples, who in their exaggeration of faults and vices 
serve as signposts to a knowledge of their master. 1 The literary chil- 
dren of any great man are often revelatory caricatures of their progenitor. 

This completes the process. To be a scientific critic is to study an 
author in his race, his native country, his epoch, his family, his education 
and early environment, his group of associates, his first success, his 
first moment of disintegration, his peculiarities of body and mind, espe- 
cially his weaknesses. We must determine his faculte maitresse; we 
must glance at his imitators and disciples and learn of him from his 
friends and his enemies; and we must devise for him a formula and 
classify him in his famille d'esprits. In Sainte-Beuve's own words: 

La vraie critique, telle que je me la definis, consiste plus que jamais a 
etudier chaque etre, c'est a dire chaque auteur, chaque talent, selon les con- 
ditions de sa nature ; a en f aire une vive et f idele description, a charge toutefois 
de le classer ensuite et de le mettre a sa place dans l'ordre de Tart. 2 

It is noticeable, we must repeat, that through all this Sainte-Beuve 
is concerned more with getting at the peculiar germinal principles of 
personality than with estimating the peculiar excellences of the work. 
In this connection could not these words of his concerning other critics 
of his time be applied to him ? " Personne mieux que Goethe ne s'enten- 
dait a prendre le mesure des esprits et des genies, de leur elevation et 
de leur portee; il savait les etages; c'est ce que trop de critiques oublient 
et confondent aujourd'hui." 3 Is he, too, one of those who "forget and 
confound" the real merits and qualities of men in the interest of more 
narrowly scientific explanation of tangible phenomena ? 

1 "Rien ne juge mieux les generations litteraires qui nous ont succecles que l'ad- 
miration enthousiaste et comme frenetique dont tous les jeunes ont €t€ saisis; les 
gloutons pour Balzac et les delicats pour Musset" (Cahiers, p. 34). 

3 Causeries du lundi, XII, 191. 3 Nouveaux lundis, III, 300. 



SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM 45 

And Sainte-Beuve is aware that there are those who will say that 
criticism is attempting the impossible when it tries by scientific investi- 
gation and procedure to direct and supplement the indefinable sense of 
taste. Such persons would say: " Je suis a table, je goute d'un mets, je 
goute un fruit: faut-il done tant de f aeons pour dire: 'Cela est bon, cela 
est mauvais ? ' " Do we have to know all about a man's life and surround- 
ings to enjoy his work? "Yes," says Sainte-Beuve, "to assume that a 
reader in contact with a book old or new is, or should be, like the guest 
who tastes a fruit that is offered him, consuming or setting it aside 
without knowing its nature or its origin — to do this is to treat us 

en gens paresseux et delicats. Sans £tre precisement le jardinier en meme 
temps que le convive, il est bon d'avoir, au sujet du fruit qu'on goute, le plus 
de notions possible, surtout si Ton a charge bient6t soi-meme de le servir et de 
le presenter aux autres. En un mot, le gout seul ne sufiit plus dSsormais, et 
il est bon qu'il y ait la connaissance et l'intelligence des choses. 1 

"No one," he says, to make clear his meaning by specific examples, "can 
understand Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paid et Virginie, Prevost's 
Manon Lescaut, or Vimitation de Jisus Christ, without a knowledge of 
the lives of their authors and of the century in which they came to be; 
still less can one really appreciate the truly great — Homer, Shakespeare, 
Dante — without such knowledge." 

The purpose of this scientific naturalistic criticism is to establish a 
firm basis for judgment. It must be supplemented by the operations of 
faculties whose processes are not entirely amenable to the investigations 
of science — the intuitive critical faculty, and taste. This side of his 
theory will constitute a section on Sainte-Beuve as aesthetic critic. 

1 Ibid., JX, 81. 



IV. AESTHETIC CRITICISM 

More than once in the foregoing section it was necessary to call 
attention to the fact that, after even the most sweeping and enthusiastic 
claim for the results of naturalistic criticism, Sainte-Beuve makes an 
exception, a reservation, an almost . nullifying claim as to the service 
of taste and of the native, instinctive critical faculty. In most of these 
cases, however, he is urging the service of this extra or super-scientific 
faculty, not as a substitute for the scientific process, but as a supplement 
to it. The value of constatation and la critique purement physiologique 
is great, but 

cela dit, et nonobstant ces supplements d'enquete toujours ouverts, conservons, 
s'il se peut, la legerete du gout, son impression delicate et prompte; en presence 
des ceuvres vives de l'esprit, osons avoir notre jugement net et vif aussi, et 
bien tranche, bien degage, sur de ce qu'il est, meme sans pieces a l'appui. 1 

And again: 

Maintenons, messieurs, les degres de Tart, les etages de l'esprit; encour- 
ageons toute recherche laborieuse, mais laissons en tout la maitrise au talent, 
a la meditation, au jugement, a, la raison, au gout. 2 

And again in the same essay, De la tradition en litterature: 

De cette disposition bien avouee et convenue entre nous, de ce que, tout 
en profitant de notre mieux des instruments, un peu onereux parfois, de la 
critique nouvelle, nous retiendrons quelques-unes des habitudes et les prin- 
cipes mSmes de l'ancienne critique, accordant la premiere place dans notre 
admiration et notre estime a l'invention, a la composition, a l'art d'ecrire, et 
sensibles, avant tout, aux charme de l'esprit, a l'elevation ou a la finesse du 
talent, etc. 3 

In this passage the word sensibles acknowledges and sums up the recog- 
nition of the existence and importance of a distinct critical faculty, 
which we must call upon to enable us to make a judgment, to tell finally 
when other processes may fail us, that a work is good or bad. 

Sainte-Beuve's humanistic instinct and training never deserted him, 
and he maintained that whatever work of art he had before him, though 



i 



Causeries du lundi, XV, 377. This mime sans pieces a Vappui would seem to be 
a contradiction of the often-expressed demand that the scholar and the scientist must 
precede the critic so as to enable him to base his judgments on facts. 
a Ibid., XV, 376. 3 ibid., p. 378. 

46 



AESTHETIC CRITICISM 47 

he might up to a certain point handle it as a scientific specimen, was to 
be judged on its merits as art sub specie aeternitatis as well as sub specie 
temporis. It is when he neglects this step of adjudication in criticizing, 
or refrains from taking it because of absorption in other matters, that 
he is weak. 

The weak point in Sainte-Beuve's armor is his occasional tendency to rest 
in his analysis. It is finer art to suggest the conclusion rather than to 
draw it, no doubt, but one should at least do that; he occasionally fails to 
justify his analysis in this way; so that his result is both artistically and 
philosophically inconclusive. Now and then he pays in this way for his 
aversion to pedantry and system, and the excessive disinterestedness of his 
curiosity. 1 

Sainte-Beuve was too keen a thinker not to realize that purely investi- 
gative and analytic criticism is rather a tool than an end in itself — a 
tool with which great things may be wrought but which must help to 
build a greater conception, an ideal, a standard. It is valuable as a 
contributing element in the search for the truth and as furnishing a 
basis for the measuring and appraising of works of art; but it is only 
one, and often a minor, element. After we have found out the facts, 
have explained the work of art as a product of its author and its age, 
there still persists the question which in its baldest form asks, "Is it 
good, is it bad?" and not infrequently even, "How good is it, how bad 
is it ?" Sainte-Beuve rarely shirked these questions and seldom ignored 
them, and, as has been pointed out, it is in his weaker work, where he 
limits himself to analysis, that we do not find answers to one or both 
of them. This means that Sainte-Beuve added to the scientific and 
historic critic in him a greater critic who was aesthetic and even judicial. 
It has often been said that Sainte-Beuve was not a judicial critic — 
that he did not pass judgment on the works of art he treated. 2 This 
view may be accounted for on the ground that those who hold it place 
their emphasis on Sainte-Beuve's accumulation of facts which, however 
vast and important, with him is usually a preliminary to judging. But 
before we can discuss this matter profitably it seems necessary to say 
one more word as to what constitutes a judicial critic and a critical 
judgment. 

1 Brownell, Criticism, p. 68. 

2 Critics who think that Sainte-Beuve did not pass judgment are numerous. Here 
are some examples: Levallois, op. cit., p. 112. Harper, Sainte-Beuve, p. 326, quotes 
Barbey d'Aurevilly to this effect; see also, Scherer, Faguet, L6on S6ch6, d'Hausson- 
ville, who all lay the greater emphasis on his impressionistic side. 



48 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

The description of a judicial critic as one who merely metes out 
praise or blame — who bestows laudation if he happens to approve, con- 
demnation if he happens to dislike — is a rather shallow handling of the 
matter. 1 To identify the critical judge on the one hand with the critical 
executioner who, after the manner of the old Scotch reviewers, dismisses 
his victim with a contemptuous "This will never do, Mr. Wordsworth" 
or "Back to your gallipots, John Keats," or, on the other hand, with the 
indiscriminate singer of paeans of praise, the merely appreciative impres- 
sionistic log-roller, is in either case both unfair and unjust. Sainte- 
Beuve has several warnings against undue laudation: "Vous n'en 
conclurez pas, que nous serons necessairement, a l'£gard des livres 
et des ecrivains celebres, dans la louange monotone, dans une louange 
universelle." 2 Is not, then, the judicial critic the one who, avoiding 
mere laudation and condemnation, offers a definitive appraisement, a 
final word as to the qualities and defects of the work of art; who sets 
up a comparison of this given product with some standard based not 
only on an expert personal taste but on tradition and on some of the 
laws of taste which he believes to be tested and fundamental; who does 
not leave his discussion inconclusive, but who either expressly or by 
unmistakable implication "places" his man and his book in relation 
to the standard ? 

With this idea of the judicial critic and of the process of judging 
Sainte-Beuve's practice will be found to agree. The first passage of any 
importance in this connection, the introduction to the Causeries du 
lundi, has already been quoted. 3 Speaking of his second period, that 
of appreciative criticism, he writes, it will be remembered, " cette critique 
pourtant comme telle avait un defaut — elle ne concluait pas." 4 The 
completed function, then, of the perfect criticism is to offer a conclusion. 
And Sainte-Beuve himself is conscious of having sought to remedy his 
deficiency when he writes: "En critique, j'ai assez fait l'avocat, faisons 
maintenant le juge." 5 He also accounts for the fact that he is much 
hated on the ground of his independance de jugementfi which leads him 
to speak his mind. He feels that it is the critic's duty to express his 
opinions and, if need be, trancher. 1 The true role of the critic now, 
as always, is to judge. "Le propre des critiques en general, comme 
Tindique assez leur nom, est de juger, et au besoin de trancher, de 

1 Cf. J. M. Robertson, Essays toward a Critical Method, p. 46. 

3 Causeries du lundi, XV, 379. s Portraits litteraires, III, 550. 

3 Supra, p. 2. 6 Causeries du lundi, XII, 44. 

4 Ibid., I, 3. 7 Nouveaux lundis, II, 14. 



% 



AESTHETIC CRITICISM 49 

decider" — all the great critics have done this. "Tous ces hommes ... 
jugaient des choses de gout avec vivacite; avec trop d'exclusion peut- 
etre, mais enfin avec un sentiment net, decisif et irresistible." 1 The 
most important item of this quotation is, of course, the very first "le 
propre des critiques est de juger," and one can imagine no more definite 
statement of Sainte-Beuve's belief as to this function of his calling. The 
quarrel between impressionistic and judicial criticism has taken definite 
form since Sainte-Beuve's day, but he was aware of the distinctions 
between the two practices, as witness this passage: 

Aujourd'hui il n'est pas rare de trouver, dans ceux qui s'intitulent critiques, 
du savoir, de la plume, de l'erudition, de la fantaisie. Donnez-leur un ouvrage 
nouveau, ils vont discourir a merveille sur le sujet, ou a c6te du sujet. ... lis 
vous diront tout, excepte un jugement. Ils ont tout du critique, excepte le 
judicieux. Ils n'oseront se compromettre jusqu'a dire: "Ceci est bon, ceci 
est mauvais." 2 

This might be a summary of the faults of the critical school of Anatole 
France or of Lemaitre. It is on the ground of his failure to utter a word 
of final appraisement and his consequent evasion of the essential duty 
of the critic that Sainte-Beuve pronounces Pontmartin not a critic at 
all but merely un aimable causeur. 3 

The ability to judge comes of a critical faculty, an innate gift, a 
talent which by a sort of divination arrives at a valid judgment. Such 
was the equipment of the great critics of former days, who, though lack- 
ing the knowledge that has broadened the basis of our judgments, never- 
theless delivered verdicts sound and correct — and still sound and correct. 
The humanist in Sainte-Beuve forced him to recognize that the judgments 
of former days were sound and made him look with suspicion on any 
radical reversal of tradition. Tradition is, after all, only the accumulated 
experience of the race. "Faire dans nos jugements des reformes con- 
tinuelles, si besoin est, mais des reformes seulement et non des revolu- 
tions; voila le plus sur resultat de la critique litteraire, telle que je 
Portends."* 

From a practical point of view the critic's right to give utterance 
to his judgments is limited. We must not praise too much for fear of 
exaggeration: "Nous tacherons done, de ne pas admirer plus qu'il ne 
faut, ni autrement qu'il ne faut; de ne pas tout donner a un siecle, meme 
a un grand siecle." 5 On the other hand, out of consideration for other 

1 Causeries du lundi, I, 112. 

a Ibid., I, 382. « Ibid., VIII, 391. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, II, 16. s Causeries du lundi, XV, 379. 



50 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

artists (Sainte-Beuve was not always so tactful as he would have us 
believe), we must keep to ourselves our most adverse opinions and our 
most severe condemnations. He distinguishes on this merely practical 
basis three kinds of judgments: 

Un critique, en restant ce qu'il doit etre, peut done avoir jusqu'a ... trois 
expressions de jugements: le jugement secret, intime, cause dans la chambre 
et entre amis, un jugement d'accord avec le type de talent qu'on porte en soi 
et, par consequent, comme tout ce qui est personnel, vif, passionne, prime- 
sautier, enthousiaste ou repulsif, un jugement qui, en bien des cas, emporte 
la piece; e'est celui de la predilection ou de Vantipathie. 

But, out of respect for others, we cannot express these judgments indis- 
criminately or scatter them broadcast: 

II faut, si Ton veut rester juste, introduire a chaque instant dans son 
esprit un certain contraire. Cela constitue le second jugement, reflechi et 
pondere en vue du public: e'est celui de requite et de V intelligence. Enfin 
il y a un troisieme jugement, souvent commande et dicte, au moins dans la 
forme, par les circonstances, les convenances exterieures; un jugement modifie, 
mitige par des raisons valables, des egards et des considerations dignes de 
respect; e'est ce que j'appelle le jugement de position ou d' indulgence." 1 

The last two kinds of judgments are those which a critic may print 
with safety; and most of the expressions of opinion we find in Sainte- 
Beuve could be classified under the last two heads. However, in two 
or three places he gave free rein to his pen and left us those bodies of 
trenchant verdicts on contemporary and classical authors, the hundred 
or so pages of Pensees at the end of Volume XI of the Causeries du 
lundi, and the posthumous Cahiers. In these were gathered the poison 
drops of bitter sarcasm and withering condemnation that he had not 
dared print. In general, however, in accord with his own expressed 
doctrine, his verdicts were generous and expressed with moderation. 2 
Quite, frequently Sainte-Beuve's conclusions assumed a form in which 
the meaning, though quite inescapable, is not explicitly expressed — no 
doubt the more artistic practice as a matter of style. Sainte-Beuve, 
however, risked no mistakes. Before leaving matters to the reader he 
generally led him to the point where the conclusion was inevitable. 
He says that certain persons have found fault with him for not con- 
demning the morality of the eighteenth century: 

Je leur ferai remarquer que je reussis bien mieux si je les provoque a 
la condamner eux-memes, que si je prenais les devants et paraissais vouloir 

1 Nouveaux lundis, VI, 300. 

3 " Gardons nous de l'ironie en jugeant; de toutes les dispositions de l'esprit 
l'ironie est la moins intelligente " (Cahiers, p. 75). 



AESTHETIC CRITICISM 



51 



leur imposer un jugement en toute rencontre, ce qui, a la longue, fatigue et 
choque toujours chez un critique. Le lecteur aime assez a se croire plus severe 
que le critique; je lui laisse ce plaisir-la. 1 

Perhaps this is sufficient to make clear the fact that Sainte-Beuve 
believed that the critical process should eventuate in a judgment or a 
series of judgments expressed or unmistakably implied. It is also clear 
that to him the trustworthy judicial critic is one who bases his judgments 
not on merely personal likes and dislikes but rather on aesthetic grounds 
and on some basic principles of art. Sainte-Beuve taught that there 
were such universal principles which all critics were bound to recognize; 
that there was a fundamental ground from which artists shifted but 
slightly, and that remaining on this fundamental ground was entirely 
compatible with individual variation: 

J'ai sou vent remarque que, quand deux bons esprits portent un jugement 
tout a fait different sur le meme auteur, il y a fort a parier que c'est qu'ils ne 
pensent pas en effet, pour le moment, au meme objet, ... que c'est qu'ils ne 
l'ont pas tout entier present, qu'ils ne le comprennent pas actuellement tout 
entier. Une attention et une connaissance plus etendues rapproacheraient 
les jugements dissidents et les remettraient d'accord. Mais aussi il y a,meme 
dans le cercle r6gulier et gradue des admirations legitimes, une certaine lati- 
tude a laisser a la diversite des gouts, des esprits et des ages. 2 

Critical judgments differ, then, only because critics are not looking 
at the same thing in an author, are not regarding him under the same 
aspects; if they did (by implication) their estimates of him would be 
the same, and all would agree as to excellence or defect. This looks 
like a clear recognition of some absolute critical criterion, one which is 
the same to all men, when all men see the facts clearly. These things 
are the essentials, Sainte-Beuve goes on to say, and the matters of indi- 
vidual taste are relegated to the less important, to the outer fringe of art. 

Judgments and estimates may be absolute, therefore, because they 
are founded on something universal. Judgments of personal taste are 
useful only in a very limited field. 

Oh! Que je hais, en fait d'art, ces jugements soi-disant senses, qui, ne se 
laissant pour rien deloger de leur cadres, ne savent ni remonter d'une idee au 
dessus des choses de leur berceau, ni se transporter dans la posterite d'une 
journee par dela l'instant de la tombe. lis representent le pr£jug6 vivant dans 
toute sa rectitude et son aplomb. 3 

That is to say, the critic who cannot transcend his time and look to the 
eternal principles at art is exhibiting mere prejudice. 

1 Causeries du lundi, II, 267. a Ibid., XV, 381. * Cahiers, p. 37. 






52 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

Sainte-Beuve repeats several times that criticism, la science morale, 
has its laws: 

II semble qu'en litterature et en morale les choses ne se passent point comme 
dans la science proprement dite et que ce soit toujours a recommencer; je 
pense toutefois qu'il y a, dans cet ordre d'obser\ T ations aussi, de certaines con- 
clusions acquises et demontrees sur lesquelles il n'y a pas lieu pour les bons 
esprits a. revenir. La science morale, bien comprise, bien appliquee aux indivi- 
dus, a, comme toutes les sciences, ses jugements definitifs et ses resultats. 1 

But even clearer recognition of abiding principles for judging are 
made by him in his comment that the time has now come to do justice 
to Beranger: " de lui payer, dis-je, une large part, mais une part mesuree 
au meme poids et dans la meme balance dont nous nous servons pour 
d'autres." 2 These "meme poids et la meme balance dont nous nous servons 
pour d'autres," are they not Sainte-Beuve's literary criteria, the stand- 
ards which shall apply to all artists? But while he saw the necessity 
for great and broad principles of criticism, with characteristic broad- 
mindedness he made room as he always did for un certain contraire. He 
warns us solemnly against systematizing, against strict adherence to 
rules; the world is in constant flux, he says: 

Oh! je la sais, dans le tourbillon accelere qui entraine le monde et les 
societes modernes, tout change, tout s'agrandit et se modifie incessamment. 
Des formes nouvelles de talents se produisent chaque jour; toutes les regies, 
oVapres lesquelles on s'etait accoutume a juger les choses mimes de V esprit, sont 
dejouees; l'etonnement est devenu une habitude; nous marchons de monstres 
en monstres. Le vrai d'hier, deja incomplet ce matin, sera demain tout a fait 
depasse et laisse derriere. Les moules, fixes a peine, deviennent aussitot trop 
etroits et insufnsants. Aussi, ... chacun a. chaque instant devrait etre occupe 
a briser dans son esprit le moule qui est pres de prendre et de se former. Xe 
nous figeons pas; tenons nos esprits vivants et fluides. 3 

In this characteristic passage he thus warns us against setting up petty 
standards, and the stiff and narrow application of any standard; but he 
is certainly not advising the abrogation of all criteria. 

There are five pierres de touche whereby the critic tests the quality 
of the work of art, five weights in the judicial scales in which he appraises 
values: first and foremost, taste; second, reality, truth to life; third, 
tradition — these chief; we add a fourth, logic and consistency, and a 
fifth, morality, which played a real though minor part in Sainte-Beuve's 
procedure. 



1 Xouveaux lundis, m, 2. 

2 Causeries du lundi, II, 286. 



3 Xouveaux lundis, VTI, 49. 



AESTHETIC CRITICISM 53 

The first and it may be said the most important weight in the scales 
of judgment is taste. We have seen already that Sainte-Beuve regarded 
the criticism of mere unaided taste as out of date, but also that he 
insisted on taste as an essential quality in the critic, and a necessary 
factor in criticism. He saw clearly that to say "I do not like it" is 
not passing a judgment or giving a real decision on the ultimate value 
of any work, being as it is a statement of one's own mere opinion, and 
very probably a revelation of one's own limitations. Shakespeare 
remains great whether Voltaire liked him or not, and it is not Shake- 
speare's demerit that the illustrious French critic was not able to see 
his greatness. 

Taste, however, is the primary arbiter, the sentinelle toujours en 
eveille, 1 the guidepost which points the way for the critic and tells him 
when he is in the right path. It is the complement of the indispensable 
bon sens; it transcends reason, for, since it is instinctive, it functions 
where reason does not and cannot function. 2 Le gotit is not a capricious 
gift of fortune, knowing no laws, a matter of whim; on the contrary it 
has its own rules, its own body of accumulated precedents, for it abides 
from age to age. "Je crois toujours a la permanence d'une certaine 
delicatesse, une fois acquise, dans Tame humaine, dans l'esprit des 
hommes ou des femmes" 3 — this delicatesse is a synonym of good taste. 
Le bon goUt can be cultivated and refined in persons and in social groups; 
it is not entirely lost even in the grossest epochs. 

What, then, is this "taste" which is so important in criticism? 
"Rien n'est plus rare que le bon gout, a le prendre en son sens exquis ... 
l'amour du simple, du sense, de l'eleve, de ce qui est grand sans phrase." 4 
One must keep correcting one's self in writing "par un sens vif, delicat, 
mobile, qui a chaque instant remet tout en question; et ce sens exquis 
s'appelle le gout." 5 Mme de Girardin, he says, defines go At as la 
pudeur de l'esprit, and this he calls a good definition. 6 Montaigne was 
lacking in good taste, "si l'on entend par gout le choix net et parfait, 
le degagement des elements du beau." 7 

Taste in Sainte-Beuve's mind is a sort of sixth sense and partakes of 
the nature of the other senses in that it is unreasoning and sure and at 
times epicurean: 

L'Abbe Gedoyn Fa tres-bien remarque; "le gout, a proprement parler, 
emporte Fidee de je ne sais quelle materialite." II y entre une part de sens. 

1 Causeries du lundi, XV, 373. 

2 Ibid., V, 69. s Cahiers, p. 56. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 85. 6 Causeries du lundi, III, 391. 

4 Causeries du lundi, I, 283. 7 Ibid., IV, 80. 



54 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

Le mot judicium des Latins a une acception plus etendue et un peuplusabstraite 
que notre mot gout ... les gens d'esprit qui, a table, mangent au hasard, ... 
peuvent etre de grands raisonneurs et de hautes intelligences, mais ils ne sont 
pas des gens de goilt. 1 

Because taste is a sense and consequently savors of the flesh, 
De Laprade makes an assault on the homme de godt, who, he says, "est 
celui qui n'a jamais rien admire." But Sainte-Beuve comes to the 
defense: 

II en veut au goUt de ce que son nom est emprunte au moins noble de tous 
les sens. ... II ne sent pas que c'est, au contraire, en vertu d'une analogie 
exquise que ce mot de gout a prevalu chez nous sur celui de jugement. Le 
jugement! Je sais des esprits qui Pont tres bon et qui, en meme temps man- 
quent de gout, parceque le gout exprime ce qu'il y a de plus fin et de plus 
instinctif dans le plus confusement delicat des organes. 3 

Taste is essentially a selective faculty, a distinguishing instrument, 
but, like the other senses, may become fatigued and refuse to function. 
"Le vrai gout discerne, examine; il a ses temps de repos, et il choisit." 3 
"H faut choisir, et la premiere condition du gout, apres avoir tout 
compris, est de ne pas voyager sans cesse, mais de s'asseoir une fois 
et de se fixer. Rien ne blase et n'eteint plus le gout que les voyages 
sans fin; l'esprit poetique n'est pas le Juif Errant."* The basis of 
taste is stable, abiding throughout the ages, and, though taste does 
undergo certain minor changes, sometimes growing more refined, some- 
times seeming to deteriorate, it never departs very widely from its stable 
basis; it changes so slowly from moment to moment in the individual 
and from generation to generation in the race that there is no shock 
of change. 

In consequence taste is identified in some measure with the classical 
spirit and tradition; it is a humanistic ideal and is bound up with the 
conception of the perfect man. We must attain "a la vraie mesure 
humaine; sans laquelle il n'est pas de grand gout, de gout veritable." 5 

1 Portraits litter aires, III, 548. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, I, 12. This same idea is found again here: " Vous avez beau 
dire, je ne croirai jamais qu'un homme aussi malpropre ait 6te" un homme de gout" 
(Planche); "le gout, apres tout, n'est que le plus subtil des sens" (Correspondance, 
I, 320). 

3 Causeries du lundi, III, 215. « Ibid., Ill, 53. 

5 Nouveaux lundis, II, 27. This phrase le grand gout is generally used of the age 
of Louis XIV. Sainte-Beuve must have had this in mind when he wrote the passage. 



AESTHETIC CRITICISM 



55 



In one place he identifies urbanite and gout, 1 and urbaniti, as we shall 
see later, is to Saint-Beuve the main characteristic of the classical age. 

The sixteenth century saw the rise of this doctrine of taste, 2 but in 
the seventeenth there occurred for the only time in the history of France 
the union of bon sens and bon gout, which to Sainte-Beuve seemed the 
ultimate literary achievement. 3 In the eighteenth century taste was 
on the ebb; it was not so exquisitely educated, nor so widely dissemi- 
nated as it had been, though in essence it remained the same. But 
in Sainte-Beuve's own day he says, in one of the few hopeful passages 
about modern literature, that taste was returning to its ancient authority 
and was again being trained to excellence, largely under the lead of 
Chateaubriand. That author 

revenait et nous ramenait par des hauteurs un peu escarpees et impreVues a 
la grande et forte langue, et c'etait sur ses traces que le gout lui-meme devait 
retrouver bient6t sa vigueur et son originalite. Ce gout r6flechi et acquis, 
mais reel, est une des con quotes de la critique depuis M. Walckenaer.* 

Taste was, then, to Sainte-Beuve another sense, a perception of unity, 
of simplicity, of dignity; unreasoning and spontaneous but eminently 
educable, a touchstone for the simple, the refined, the unexaggerated. 
It is to him both a native, instinctive sensibility, and a habit cultivated 
by experience and tradition. "It is inborn, as spontaneous as insight, 
indeed with an insight of its own." s Taste was, we may say then, the 
keystone of Sainte-Beuve's critical judicial arch. 

The second of Sainte-Beuve's critical divining-rods was realite, or, 
to sum it up as fairly as possible in one phrase, truth to life. 6 He does 
not mean the reality posited in the creed of professed realism, not 
actuality as the record of observed facts; he would set his reality over 
against sentimental idealism on the one hand, and cynical disillusion- 
ment on the other. He would ask, when he has for study a drama, a 
novel, "Do people conduct their lives like this; are these the motives 
on which men act, and is this the response that would be called out by 
this combination of circumstances and motives, has the author made 

1 Causeries du lundi, III, 69. 
'Ibid., IV, 80. 

3 Ibid., Ill, 256. "Le plein bon sens et le vrai bon gout, chez nous, n'ont 
jamais existe ensemble qu'a un tres-court moment de la literature et de la langue." 

4 Ibid., VI, 173. "Depuis M. Walckenaer," after 1830. He is, of course, speaking 
here only of the revival of taste in the nineteenth century. 

5 Stedman, Nature of Poetry, p. 72. 

6 For his demand for the study of truth by the critic see Causeries du lundi, X, 47. 



56 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

on us the impression that this is life as men and women live it and feel 
it; though we must grant that these events did not take place in the 
actual world, may we yet assume that they would seem natural or 
credible if they did?" Since Sainte-Beuve's time this reality has at 
times seemed to be regarded by some critics as the one and sufficient 
tenet. 1 But none of them could be more convincing, and few of them 
would be so eloquent, as Sainte-Beuve in the following passage: 

Realite, tu es le fond de la vie, et comme telle, meme dans tes asperites, 
meme dans tes rudesses, tu attaches les esprits serieux, et tu as pour eux un 
charme. Et pourtant, a la longue et toute seule, tu finirais par rebuter insen- 
siblement,parrassasier; tues trop souvent plate, vulgaire et lassante. C'est 
bien assez de te rencontrer a chaque pas dans la vie; on veut du moins dans 
Fart, en te retrouvant et en te sentant presente ou voisine toujours, avoir 
affaire encore a autre chose que toi. Oui, tu as besoin, a tout instant, ... 
d'etre relevee par quelque endroit, sous peine d'accabler et peut-etre d'ennuyer 
comme trop ordinaire. II te faut, pour le moins, posseder et joindre a tes 
merites ce genie d'imitation si parfait, si anime, si fin, qu'il devient comme une 
creation et une magie a son tour, cet emploi merveilleux des moyens et des 
precedes de Fart qui, sans s'etaler et sans faire montre, respire ou brille dans 
chaque detail comme dans l'ensemble. II te faut le style, en un mot. II te 
faut encore, s'il se peut, le sentiment, un coin de sympathie, un rayon moral 
qui te traverse et qui te vienne eclairer; ... autrement, bientot tu nous laisses 
froids, indifferents, ... nous nous ennuyons de ne point trouver en toi notre 
part et notre place. II te faut encore, et c'est la le plus beau triomphe, il te 
faut, tout en etant observee et respectee, je ne sais quoi qui t'accomplisse et 
qui t'acheve, qui te rectifie sans te fausser, qui t'eleve sans te faire perdre 
terre, qui te donne tout l'esprit que tu peux avoir sans cesser un moment de 
paraitre naturelle, qui te laisse reconnaissable a tous, mais plus lumineuse 
que dans l'ordinaire de la vie, plus adorable et plus belle ... ce qu'on appelle 
V ideal enfin. 

Que si tout cela te manque et que tu te bornes strictement a ce que tu 
es, sans presque nul choix et selon le hasard de la rencontre, si tu te tiens a 
tes pauvretes ... et a tes rugosites de toutes sortes, eh bien! je t 'accepter ai 
encore, et s'il fallait opter, je te prefererais meme ainsi, pauvre et mediocre, 
mais prise sur le fait, mais sincere, a toutes les chimeres brillantes, aux fantaisies, 
aux imaginations les plus folles ou les plus fines ... parcequ'il y a en toi la 
source, le fond humain et naturel duquel tout jaillit a son heure, et un attrait 
de verite, parfois un inattendu touchant, que rien ne vaut et ne rechete. 3 

1 Brownell, op. cit., pp. 62-63. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, IV, 137. This passage occurs in his consideration of Champ- 
fleury's Violon de Faience. Art must have the ideal to redeem the true. Zola's 
Therese Racquin "en r£duisant l'art a n'Stre que la seule et simple verite [elle] me 
parait hors de cette v6rit6" (Correspondance, II, 314). 



AESTHETIC CRITICISM 57 

This remarkable passage, reproduced at this length because of its 
importance, might well be taken as Sainte-Beuve's literary credo — 
reality treated with sentiment and art. This demand for truth to life 
here in connection with realism is a classical and humanistic doctrine, 
and Sainte-Beuve is only saying in another way: "Rien n'est beau que 
le vrai, le vrai seul est aimable." In this respect the classicists and the 
realists join hands indeed, are united to so great an extent that one is 
justified in distinguishing not three types of literature — classical, 
romantic, and realistic — but two, humanistic and romantic; for the 
genuine realists and the true classicists are one in their demand for that 
truth to life which the romanticists are inclined to disregard or more 
actively to repudiate. 

Sainte-Beuve makes an adequate synthesis of the best thinking con- 
cerning realism in art when he distinguishes between reality as truth to 
life and reality as mere fact. While reality he feels is eminently both 
the field and the product of art, mere fact demands artistic treatment 
if it is to produce artistic results. Where purely scientific and factual 
truth begins, literature ends — or perhaps the converse of this statement is 
more just, literature begins where scientific fact ends. "Gardez-vous 
de l'histoire. ... Evitons dans Tart serieux de rendre trop sensible la 
divorce entre la poesie et la verite," 1 meaning here by verite this factual 
aspect of truth. True he is speaking here only of poetry, but in the 
passage quoted above he makes the same demand for all literature. 

Art must transcend and purify its subject-matter, the ultimate 
truth, but when it fails to keep to the basis of reality in this higher sense 
it repudiates its essential function. Again and again Sainte-Beuve 
condemns a work or a character, "ce n'est pas vrai," and means that 
it is not true to life. 2 

The third of the critical criteria that make up Sainte-Beuve's 
testing equipment is tradition. He means by this the corpus of ideas and 

1 Nouveaux lundis, V, 306. On the other hand: "Vous aimez, monsieur, dans 
la poesie la realitS et le sentiment: je suis de cette meme ecole" (Correspondance, I, 
170). Let us recognize once for all that Sainte-Beuve did not and could not make 
the distinction between reality and verity which has grown up in critical thinking since 
his time. 

3 It is interesting to note that Sainte-Beuve often decides truth to life on a basis 
of tradition. It is of course obvious that in the demand for truth to life one has to 
ask "truth to whose life?" Sainte-Beuve claims that there are laws of this as well 
as of the other aspects of literature. He says: "Le roman n'est pas entierement 
d'accord avec la vent6 humaine, avec l'entiere verit6 telle que les grands peintres de la 
passion l'ont de tout temps concue" (Nouveaux lundis, VII, 146). 



58 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

customs which has drawn together throughout the ages, concerning the 
content and the form of art. In trying to reconstitute Sainte-Beuve's 
idea of it we must examine his opinion on the French tradition — the vari- 
ous elements that go to make it up, and the schools that have contributed 
to it. There is, Sainte-Beuve believes, a prevailing tradition in French 
literature, the classical, and so far from being a shallow assumption or 
a pose it is something deeply ingrained in French national character 
and taste: 

II y a une tradition: qui le nierait? Elle existe pour nous toute tracee, 
elle est visible, comme une de ces avenues et de ces voies im menses, grandioses, 
qui traversaient autrefois PEmpire, et qui aboutissaient a la Ville par excellence. 
Descendants des Romains, ... nous avons a embrasser, a comprendre, a ne 
jamais deserter Pheritage de ces maitres et de ces peres illustres, heritage ... 
qui forme le plus clair et le plus solide de notre fonds intellectuel. Cette 
tradition ... consiste en un certain principe de raison et de culture qui a 
penetre a la longue, pour le modifier, dans le caractere meme de cette nation 
gauloise, et qui est entre des longtemps jusque dans la trempe des esprits. 
C'est la tout ce qu'il importe de ne pas laisser perdre, ce qu'il faut ne point 
souffrir qu'on altere ... sans avertir du moins et sans s'alarmer comme dans 
un peril commun. 1 

It is this classical tradition, the legacy from the Greeks and Latins, 
which we must strive to preserve. There has never been a great writer, 
says Sainte-Beuve, outside this tradition; they all knew and embodied 
its essential ideas. Not even Shakespeare, he claims, was without it. 3 
Sainte-Beuve himself was distinctly and consciously in the line: 

He possessed a delicate taste for beautiful work and a strong respect for 
the traditions which have fostered it. Here is the universal and abiding 
element of his talent. He has a sense for the classical, balancing and employ- 
ing his restless instinct for individuality. In this respect it may be said that 
two schools of art and indeed two centuries so widely separated as the seven- 
teenth and nineteenth find in him their representative. He entertained for 
the long tried opinion and generally approved judgments of competent prede- 
cessors, an almost reverent respect ... He was practical enough also to 
perceive the advantage of classicism as consecrating a stable body of accepted 
opinions. He appreciated the simplicity and the general sufficiency of these 
standards in the case of French literature. In spite of his skeptical habit, 
in spite of his distrust of theory and doctrine, he too, like Bossuet, whom he 
deeply respected, was ever seeking eternal law under the discordant contra- 
dictions of human history .3 

1 Causeries du lundi, XV, 357. 

2 Ibid., p. 366. * Harper, op. cit. f p. 137. 



AESTHETIC CRITICISM 59 

As he grew older this approval of the classical became more pronounced 
and more outspoken. "He sided more and more with the Olympians 
against the Titans." 1 He increasingly identified things normal, sane, 
healthy, with the classical, things unsound and abnormal with the 
romantic. 2 He carefully denned "the classic" in his article "De la 
tradition en literature" in Volume XV of the Lundis: 

Le classique, en effet, dans son caractere le plus general et dans sa plus 
large definition, comprend les litteratures a l'etat de sante et de fleur heureuse, 
les litteratures en plein accord et en harmonie avec leur epoque, avec leur cadre 
social, avec les principes et les pouvoirs dirigeants de la societe ... les lit- 
eratures qui sont et qui se sentent chez elles, dans leur voie, non declassed, 
non troublantes.3 

Elsewhere he quotes Goethe to the same effect. " J'appelle le classique 
le sain, et le romantique le malade." A classic is a writer in accord with 
his time; a romantic, one who is not. 4 To Sainte-Beuve, however, the 
supreme beauty, indeed the only real beauty, is to be found within 
that classical tradition which once or twice in the history of the world 
has come to full flower: 

Quand je parle de beaute, je m'entends, et je m'addresse a ceux qui savent 
de quoi il s'agit, lorsqu'ils prononcent ce mot. II peut y avoir dans un ouvrage 
de Phabilete ... sans qu'il y'ait veritablement beaute. ... Relisez un chant 
d'Homere, une scene de Sophocle, un chceur d'Euripide, un livre de Virgile! 
grandeur ou flamme du sentiment, eclat de Texpression, et s'il se peut, harmonie 
de composition et d'ensemble, ... ce sont la quelques — uns des traits et des 
conditions de cette beaute plus aisee a sentir qu'a definir. ... Elle n'a brille 
dans ses parfaits exemplaires, cette incomparable beaute, qu'une seule fois ou 
peut-£tre deux fois sous le soleil. 5 

And again he writes "le beau semble appartenir plus exclusivement a 
l'antiquite." 6 

In the article "De la tradition en litterature" he traces the course 
of this, to him, paramount tradition through the ages. Hellenic art 

1 Babbitt, Masters of Modern French Criticism, p. 137. 

2 Ibid., XV, 369. To be sure he always admired romantic feeling and treatment, 
provided they were noble, as his admiration for Shakespeare and his love for 
Musset show, and he did say of the Romantic movement as late as 1851, it is one 
"que j'aime, dont je m'honore d'etre, moi indigne, dont les amis, toutes les admira- 
tions de ma jeunesse, ont 6te, dont tous ceux qui survivent sont encore" (Nouveaux 
lundis, III, 97). 

3 Ibid., p. 369. 4 Causeries du lundi, III, 46. s Nouveaux lundis, III, 377. 

6 Ibid., p. 409. He repeats the same thought in the article "Qu'est ce qu'un 
classique" in Causeries du lundi, III. 



60 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

was and still is supreme — the source and fountainhead of all subsequent 
artistic inspiration. One may well question, he says, whether or not 
all the productions of all the other literatures are worth a single master- 
piece of Greek art. From Greece he traces the stream to Rome where 
it created Latin literature. All great writers in the occidental world 
have been of this tradition, have derived their inspiration from antiquity, 
and have been dominated by this souffle hellenique. To this prevailing 
line of tradition coming down from Greece, the Middle Ages added one 
powerful element when, to the tradition of Atticism and urbanity, they 
added "le sentiment delicat de l'amour et de la courtoisie chevaleresque " 
and the chivalric service of the lady as an ideal; 1 that and Christian 
antiquity "litterairement imparfaite, moralement superieure" are the 
only accretions of the modern world to the ancient tradition. 

What is true of literary inspiration in general is true in particular 
of the spirit that moves in literary criticism — that it derives from this 
unbroken classical tradition: "En critique comme en morale, les anciens 
ont trouve toutes les grandes lois; les modernes n'ont fait le plus sou vent 
que rafhner spirituellement sur Jes details." 2 The one time in history 
since the mighty Hellenic days, when it came to full flower, is the age of 
Louis XIV, the grand sie~cle, the triumphant moment of French literature. 
As a classicist and a humanist Sainte-Beuve felt that in this moment 
French letters reached the apogee. To be real critics we must have 
knowledge of classical art both at its fountainhead and as it has expressed 
itself in this French thought and art. 3 Literature then was classical, in 
both the senses in which he used the word, since it both produced the 
greatest literary masters of the nation and at the same time followed 
most closely the artistic spirit of the ancients. 4 The work of this 

1 Causeries du lundi, XV, 360 ff. 

2 Ibid., I, 13. 

3 Sainte-Beuve lays some stress on the need of classical training for a literary man. 
We shall have to study antiquity from our earliest youth and make it ours when our 
minds are impressionable (Nouveaux lundis, VII, 47). What a privation it is not to 
know Greek! "Avoue," says Pindar, "que c'est la plus grande amertume pour 
Phomme de connaitre les belles choses et de s'en voir le pied dehors par necessit6." 
" Appliquez cela," comments Sainte-Beuve, "a la litterature grecque, a ceux qui le 
savent et en sont prives" (Cahiers, p. 152). 

4 It is necessary to keep in mind the distinction between the two senses of the 
term "classical" in Sainte-Beuve, the difference between a "classical writer" and a 
"classic." The former is a writer in the tradition of the ancients; the latter Sainte- 
Beuve defines thus: "Un vrai classique — c'est un auteur qui a enrichi l'esprit humain, 
qui en a r£ellement augments le tresor, qui lui a fait faire un pas de plus, qui a decouvert 



AESTHETIC CRITICISM 



61 



consummate age was Sainte-Beuve's perpetual standard for com- 
parison: 

He never questioned the personal authority of Bossuet, nor the beauty 
and propriety of Racine's matured style, nor the sanity of Mme de Sevigne. 
With the utmost distinctness he conceived of seventeenth-century literature 
as an entity, an organism, a thing complete in itself. Its excellence was to him 
self-evident. He could never have been brought to share Renan's opinion 
that it was empty and unedifying. It gave him a standard. To this test he 
brought the sixteenth century the eighteenth; and ultimately the nineteenth. 1 

In matters of style as in those of philosophy and ideas he finds his model 
and standard in this seventeenth century. He often wished for a return 
of that moderate and pellucid yet colorful writing, the secret of which 
the merest dames de cour of the great age seemed to have at their pen 
points. We have quoted in another connection the passage of mag- 
nificent eloquence in which he voices his enthusiasm for the "noble and 
mighty harmony of the grand siecle," 2 and many other passages in 
which he speaks with admiration equally sincere, if less eloquent, could 
be added. Indeed one finally comes to feel that on this point Sainte- 
Beuve displays something less than his characteristic balance of mind 
and complete catholic receptivity. It assumes the proportions of a 
"fixed idea," a state of mind quite unexpected in him who in other 
things invariably provided room for un certain contraire. 

In spite of his enthusiasm — rather because of it — Sainte-Beuve 
judged very severely the classical school of the eighteenth and early 
nineteenth centuries, recognizing it as the merest neo-classicism, not a 
reincarnation of the Hellenic or the Roman spirit, but a dead imitation 
of the ancient forms. To the pseudo-classical school of the eighteenth 
century he had a positive aversion; he had no words of condemnation 
too strong for writers like Jean Baptiste Rousseau and Louis Racine, 



quelque verite morale non equivoque, ou ressaisi quelque passion Stemelle dans le 
cceur ou tout semblait connu et explore; qui a rendu sa pensee, son observation ou 
son invention, sous une forme n'importe laquelle, mais large et grande, fine et sensee, 
saine et belle en soi; qui a parle a tous dans un style a lui et qui se trouve aussi celui de 
tout le monde, dans un style nouveau sans neologisme, nouveau et antique, aisement 
contemporain de tous les ages" (Causeries du lundi, III, 42). In this sense a roman- 
ticist may be a "classic." 

1 Harper, op. cit., p. 324. It seems, however, that he became at times dissatisfied 
even with this ideal. " Je ne sais si beaucoup de gens sont comme moi, mais j'avoue 
que par moments je commence a en avoir assez de la litterature du XVII me siecle" 
(Nouveaux lundis, V, 371; cf. also p. 257). 

2 Cf. supra, p. 18. 



62 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

whose work he regarded as but a servile and empty imitation of the 
forms of the great age: 

Que d'imitation des Grecs aux Latins, de ceux-ci aux Italiens, aux modernes. 
Le meme fonds poetique a ete exploite a satiete et remanie. La forme seule 
s'est renouvellee un peu a la surface. L'invention est souvent aussi mince 
que la feuille d'or ou d'argent qui recouvre le cuivre. 1 

It is, then, the spirit of the classical tradition — its sanity, modera- 
tion, dignity, beauty — that the artist must try to appropriate and to 
re-embody; he does nothing if he makes a formal copy of some great 
predecessor. "L'artiste doit etre de son temps," and when he imitates 
he ceases to be "de son temps." 2 

One of Sainte-Beuve's essential doctrines was that of the continuous 
progress of the human mind. He was fond of the figure of a great river 
as suggesting the continuous irresistible and beneficent onward sweep 
of the spirit of the race. Any such attitude as that assumed by the 
pseudo-classical artist creates at the best an eddy, a side current apart 
from the main stream, and at the worst, as in the case of the mere imita- 
tions, becomes a stagnant shallow without life or motion. Over- 
whelmed by the treatment of the genuine classic, they may say: "All 
the great things have been done; nothing remains but to enjoy them 
and imitate them." But after years of such enjoyment and such 
production what goal have we reached ? Alas, one may be learned and 
distinguished "mais immobile, mais borne, ferme et tout a fait etranger 
a la vraie activite intellectuelle tou jours renaissante." 3 The artist and 
" critiques classiques qui se flattent de n'avoir pas varie depuis trente ans, 
ceux qui n'ont cesse de rester fideles dans leurs recommandations a tous 
les procedes et a toutes les routines d'academie et d'atelier," must give 
way in favor of the really classical writers who reinterpret the ancient 
spirit in a modern way, for example as did Andre Chenier 4 when he 
cried in a famous passage: "Sur des pensers nouveaux faisons des vers 
antiques." Chenier's work breathes the sanity, the beauty, the inde- 
finable exaltation, the inimitable distinction of the truly classical. 

The French tradition is, then, the classical tradition modified as a 
matter of course by a certain Gallic quality which harmonizes on the 
whole with the other elements. There are lands, Sainte-Beuve says, 
where the classic tradition cannot survive: "II y a des langues et des 

1 Cahiers, p. 166. 

3 Causeries du lundi, XII, 15. See also on imitation of ancients, ibid., Ill, 49. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, III, 73. * Causeries du lundi, X, 438. 



AESTHETIC CRITICISM 



63 



litteratures ouvertes de toutes parts et non circonscrites auxquelles je 
ne me figure pas qu'on puisse appliquer le mot de classique. Je ne me 
figure pas qu'on dise 'les classiques allemands. ,, ' I But to the French- 
man there is something native and congenial in the tradition — the word 
comes naturally to the lips in speaking of his best work; he adopts the 
ancient raison and sanity of the classic; he lightens and modifies them 
by his own sociability, 2 and by his theatricality. 3 The core of French 

thought and artistic achievement is the Hellenic tradition molded and 

« 

adapted by the exigencies of modern time and place. 4 

Sainte-Beuve's classicism occasionally assumed the form of a human- 
istic protest against the presumptuous excesses of scientific naturalism, 
the superincumbent weight of vapid idealism, or the lawless profusion 
of irresponsible romanticism. This brings us, however, by another 
path upon that irreconcilable contradiction in his thought that we were 
obliged to recognize in studying his naturalism, the contradiction between 
the humanist and the scientist, the devotee of tradition and the believer 
in progress, the apostle of the ancients and the champion of the moderns, 
for Sainte-Beuve was all these at one and the same time; chameleon-like 
he changed color with the material he was concerned with, or rather, true 
to one of his own principles, he took on the tone and atmosphere of the 
work he discussed. 

This dual activity of his mind produced his divided and discordant 
attitude toward his own epoch. The humanist in him assured him that 
the nineteenth century was a degeneration, his belief in a preceding 
classical age compelled him to view his own time as decadent. The 
distinguishing mark of decadence is exaggeration — of excellences, till 

1 Cahiers, p. 108. 

2 "Le Francais est sociable. ... II faut laisser aux peuples divers leur genie, tout en 
cherchant a le feconder et a l'etendre. Le Francais est sociable, et il Test surtout 
par la parole ... et les arts ont besoin, en general, pour lui plaire et pour reussir tout 
a fait chez lui, de rencontrer cette disposition premiere de son esprit et de s'identifier 
au moins en passant avec elle" (Causeries du lundi, IX, 311). 

3 The entrance of Matho into Carthage through the viaduct in Flaubert's 
Salammbd: "C'est bien de l'extraordinaire et du theatral on l'avouera ... disait un 
de mes amis. ... 'II y a toujours de l'opera dans tout ce que font les Francais, meme 
ceux qui se piquent de reel.' " This "ami" is probably nonexistent, but Sainte- 
Beuve often used this device to say things he wished not to say in his own person 
(Nouveaux lundis, IV, 61). 

4 "L'artiste doit £tre de son temps, doit porter dans son ceuvre le cachet de son 
temps — a ce prix est la vie durable, comme le succes. ... Tachons dans nos ceuvres 
d'exprimer l'esprit de notre siecle, de dire a notre heure ce qui n'a pas €t€ dit encore ' 
(Causeries du lundi, XII, 15). 



64 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 



they become defects or at least mannerisms; of defects, till they become 
unpardonable faults. It is precisely this exaggeration, this over-emphasis, 
which Sainte-Beuve finds to be the main fault of his contemporaries. 
" J'ai le deuil dans le cceur," he cries bitterly, " j'ai le deuil de la civilisa- 
tion que je sens perir. Oh! comme on comprend mieux [by contrast] 
en ce moment que c'est une invention delicate et sublime." 1 The 
Romantics have succeeded in destroying delicacy, the indispensable 
element in good taste: "Nous allons tomber dans une grossierete 
immense, le peu qui nous restait de la Princesse de Cleves va s'abimer 
pour jamais et s'abolir"; 2 and again, "L'epoque devient grossiere, elle 
n'estime que la gros qu'elle prend pour le grand; elle se prend a l'eti- 
quette, a la montre, a ce qui peut faire du bruit, ou etre utile positive- 
ment; l'esprit litteraire veritable est tout le contraire de cela." 3 This 
was his constant quarrel with those of his own time — that they were 
guilty of exaggeration, they offered a gross superabundance, they dis- 
played force raised to the power of mere violence — and the egregious 
thing and the dangerous thing in his eyes was that they made a virtue 
of all this. " Je le sais, la doctrine du trop, de l'exageration dite legitime, 
de la monstruosite meme, prise pour marque du genie, est a l'ordre du 
jour." This is repugnant to his humanistic good taste. " Je demande," 
he continues, "a n'en etre [de la doctrine] que sous toute reserve; j'habite 
volontiers en deca, et j'ai garde de mes vieilles habitudes litteraires le 
besoin de ne pas me fatiguer et meme le desir de me plaire a ce que 
j'admire." 4 The same avowal is in this: "J'ai, je l'avoue, en matiere 
de gout, un grand faible; j'aime ce qui est agreable." 5 Here speaks the 
humanist, the aesthetic in his call for pleasantness in art, in his avowal 
of his demand that it yield pleasure, and in his illusions of decadence. 

At the cost of what may seem only a slightly relevant discussion, it 
seems well to say something further here about Sainte-Beuve's view of 
his contemporaries, of the exponents of both schools, the romanticists 
and the realists. It must be remembered that he was himself in his 
youth of the literary household of romanticism. He surrendered him- 
self completely (the only place or time in his life when he did surrender 
himself) to what afterward seemed to him the hypnotic domination of 
the Cenacle. Under this influence he wrote his Joseph Delorme, his 
novel Volupte, which to the Sainte-Beuve of the Causeries must have 
seemed the veriest Romantic indiscretions. However, all his life he 



1 Cahiers, p. 102. 

2 Ibid., p. 85. 

3 Portraits contetnporains, V, 458. 



« Xouveaux lutidis, VIII, 95. 
s Ibid., X, 403. 



AESTHETIC CRITICISM 



65 



kept a tender place in his heart for his early literary group. 1 He also 
retained throughout certain mental habits acquired in his Romantic 
days, and he often experienced a recrudescence of Romantic enthusiasm 
and idealism. But with the Chateaubriand in 1848 his classical revulsion 
of feeling set in, and artistically and professionally he changed camp. 
In 1858 he wrote this: 

Le romantique a la nostalgie, comme Hamlet: il cherche ce qu'il n'a pas, 
et jusque par dela les nuages; il reve, il vit dans les songes. Au dix-neuvieme 
siecle, il adore le moyen age; an dix-huitieme, il est deja revolutionnaire avec 
Rousseau. Au sens de Goethe, il y des romantiques de divers temps; le jeune 
homme de Chrysostome, Stagyre, Augustin dans sa jeunesse, etaient des 
romantiques, des Renes anticipes, des malades; mais c'etaient des malades 
pour guerir, et le Christianisme les a gueris; il a exorcise le demon. Hamlet, 
Werther, Childe-Harold, les Renes purs, sont des malades pour chanter et 
souffrir, pour jouir de leur mal, des romantiques plus on moins par dilet- 
tantisme — la maladie pour la maladie. 3 

To romanticism he traced many of the faults that he found in his later 
contemporaries; he condemned it as full of affectation, as exaggerated 
to the point of violence, as guilty of the repudiation of reality and 
sanity. 

The case was different, though not better, with the realists. They 
were content to linger in the region of mere fact, whereas he regarded 
bare fact as only the foundation on which to erect the literary super- 
structure. He attributes to the "ecrivains dits realistes" the fault "de 
chercher peut-etre outre mesure la verite." 3 His most trenchant criti- 
cism of the realists occurs in his studies of Flaubert and of the De Gon- 
courts. He blames them, not for setting down in their search for reality 
what is vulgar and mean, but for going out of their way to find the vulgar 
and mean. 4 This obsession of the realists with the disagreeable, with 
what he calls the "aggressively unpleasant," he deplores and regards 
as the evidence of their decadence. Their sordid detail, their lack of 
beauty and elevation, their preoccupation with the mean and vulgar 
put them out of court as artists. 5 

This concludes the discussion of Sainte-Beuve's attitude toward 
tradition as one of the great critical criteria. We may say that we have 
in general exhibited the following: He recognized a prevailing tradi- 
tion, the classical, based on Greek and Latin standards and coming again 

1 Harper, op. tit., p. 14; cf. Causeries du lundi, III, 97, and Cahiers, p. 132, etc. 

2 Causeries du lundi, XV, 371. 4 Ibid., X, 400; IV, 40. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, II, 14. 5 Cf. on Zola, Correspondance, II, 314. 



66 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

into full bloom in France in the seventeenth century; he formed his 
opinions on the nature, form, and content of literature under the influ- 
ence of this tradition, modified by a slight measure of Romantic liberal- 
ism, a survival from the ideals and associations of his early literary life. 

Much light is thrown upon Sainte-Beuve's taste and its practical 
critical operation by observing what authors he admired and used as 
bases of comparison. Whom did he regard as classics, as types, whose 
standing was firm enough, whose repute was universal enough to qualify 
them as standards of measurement ? The following names give us cer- 
tain of his pierres de touche; but they do not exhaust his list. Foremost, 
of course, among his models and standards stand, as the great poets of 
all time, Homer, Horace, Shakespeare; and there too we find the greatest 
of critics, Goethe — "notre maitre a tous." These are the fixed stars in 
his firmament, the constellations by which he steered his critical craft. 
It is Shakespeare and Goethe whom he continually and most effectively 
used as measures of excellence. He put no French writer beside them, 
acknowledging that France had not produced a supreme literary master. 
Euripides, Sophocles, Cicero, Quintilian, Virgil, among the ancients, 
are placed only a little lower on the scale than Horace and Homer. 
From across the Channel, next to Shakespeare, he placed high the great 
English classicist, Pope, to whom he very frequently referred. 1 It has 
been necessary to speak in many connections of Sainte-Beuve's unlimited 
admiration of the great French classic writers. Montaigne and Rabelais 
are established as masters before the seventeenth century; then come 
Boileau, La Fontaine, Racine, Moliere, 2 Bossuet, Mme de Sevigne, 
Mme de Maintenon, and later, in the next century, Fenelon, and Vol- 
taire — all these claim his fealty. Andre Chenier was to him the ideal 
literary artist, combining classical spirit and form with modern subject- 
matter. 3 In the nineteenth century his enthusiasm centered mainly 
about Mme de Stael and Chateaubriand. The romanticists and the 
realists, who constituted the main body of nineteenth-century literary 
artists, were too individualistic to stand as types and standards, and 
the inevitable blindness of contemporaneity no doubt obscured some of 
their merits. 

The fourth of Sainte-Beuve's criteria for judgment which may be 
deduced from his work, for nowhere does he baldly lay it down as a 

1 His appreciation of Pope he expressed in a fine essay (Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 
104, passim). 

2 Cf. ibid., V, 277 ff., where he takes these as standards and types, 
s On Andre* ChSnier see Causeries du lundi, X t 438; III, 114, etc. 



AESTHETIC CRITICISM 67 

principle, is logic and consistency. It is so essential and fundamental a 
requisite that the artist shall not contradict himself, shall think straight 
and use the right words to express his thoughts, that Sainte-Beuve must 
have felt there was no need to establish as a principle that these things 
should be demanded of all writers. Any work must be logical and 
consistent in the mass as well as in the detail. It is, however, easy and 
certain to infer his thought on this matter from passages like the following 
on Zola's There' se Racquin. Zola has claimed that vice and virtue are 
products like acid and sugar, and Sainte-Beuve comments : 

II s'ensuivrait qu'un crime expliqu6 et motive" comme celui que vous 
exposez n'est pas chose si miraculeuse et si monstrueuse, et on se demande des 
loKL pourquoi tout cet appareil de remords qui n'est qu'une transformation 
et une transposition du remords moral ordinaire, du remords chretien, et une 
sorte d'enfer retournS. 1 

Here Zola is accused of inconsistency and illogicality in the conception 
and application of his formula; evidently he violates Sainte-Beuve's 
fourth principle. 

Sainte-Beuve held in theory that the effect of a work of art on the 
community from a moral point of view may be an index as to its ultimate 
merit. However, he himself definitely limits the field of such judgments. 

Le poete dramatique [and this is equally true of all artists] ... ne songe 
point a faire un ouvrage moral; il pense a faire un ouvrage vrai puise dans 
la nature, dans la vie. ... Mais a cette hauteur, la nature vraie, male ou tendre, 
... la nature humaine vertueusement malade, si je puis dire, produit le plus 
souvent, grace au genie et a un art tout plein d'elle, une impression morale 
qui ennoblit, qui eleve, et qui surtout jamais ne corrompt. a 

Sainte-Beuve recognized a moral function of a great work even though 
the author had no moralistic intention. On the contrary a moralistic book 
is rarely if ever*a work of art and therefore falls between two stools 
failing of both its purposes. 3 The last clause of the quotation, "qui 
surtout jamais ne corrompt," indicates clearly, however, that Sainte- 
Beuve demanded of a work of literature that it should not be corrupting; 
in other words, that he held morality as one of his criteria. The presence 
of several strictures upon various writers for indecency clinches this proof. 
It is easy to overemphasize this point. Sainte-Beuve was by nature 
and training intellectual rather than ethical in his point of view; he was 
steeped in the doctrines of relativity, his scientific studies had tended to 
give his mind a deterministic bias, and, of course, he could not be aware 

1 Correspondance, II, 314. 

3 C miseries du lundi, X, 499. 3 Ibid. 



68 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

of the recent sociological view of morals as social agreement. In his 
earlier life, too, he had been accused with some semblance of justice of 
having written poetry and a novel immoral in their tendency, and this, 
together with his belief that criticism should be as generous as possible, 
made him careful about casting the critical stone of moral stricture. 
Rarely indeed did he throw what he calls "le pave accablant, dont on 
s'arme sans cesse, qu'on jette a la tete de tout nouveau venu, avec une 
vivacite et une promptitude qui ne laissent pas d'etre curieuses si Ton 
songe a quelques-uns de ceux qui en jouent de la sorte." 1 He defended 
Feydeau, Flaubert, and others from the charge of immorality, making 
himself more often advocatus diaboli than the defender of conventional 
standards. His morality differed perhaps from the ordinary but was 
always present in his mind as a necessary concomitant of the truly 
great work. 

If we have drawn the proper inferences from the material cited we 
may assume that we have established the following regarding Sainte- 
Beuve as aesthetic critic: 

i. He was an aesthetic as well as a scientific and historical critic, 
evaluating the artistic aspects of his material. 

2. He was a judicial critic and believed it was his province to offer 
a final appraisement of a work, based on certain abiding principles. 

3. These major criteria or abiding principles are four: taste, reality, 
tradition, and logic and consistency; to which we add morality as a 
fifth, though minor, one. 

1 Causeries du lundi, XV, 347. 



V. THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE CRITIC 

In Pope's Essay on Criticism, Sainte-Beuve finds a portrait of a 
critic which he acknowledges as a presentation of his own ideal. 1 So 
satisfied is he with this portrait that he says he would like to see it hung 
above the work table of every critic, where he could have it continually 
before his eyes. Pope's lines are these: 

But where's the man, who counsel can bestow, 

Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know ? 

Unbiass'd, or by favour, or by spite; 

Not dully prepossess'd, nor blindly right; 

Tho' learn'd, well-bred; and tho' well-bred, sincere, 

Modestly bold, and humanly severe: 

Who to a friend his faults can freely show, 

And gladly praise the merit of a foe ? 

Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfin'd; 

A knowledge both of books and human kind: 

Gen'rous converse; a soul exempt from pride; 

And love to praise, with reason on his side ? 2 

Every item of this pointed antithetical "character" of Pope's is signifi- 
cant. It is in itself of great significance that Sainte-Beuve — the 
later Sainte-Beuve — should have found his ideal expressed by Pope. 
The representative English classicist had a profound influence on 
Sainte-Beuve, having embodied in his work and theory many of the 
things which the great Frenchman coveted for the criticism of his own 
day and nation. 

Sainte-Beuve himself paints an independent portrait of the ideal 
critic: 

Le jour ou viendrait un critique qui aurait le profond sentiment historique 
et vital des lettres comme Fa M. Taine, qui plongerait comrae lui ses racines 
jusqu'aux sources, en poussant d'autre part ses verts rameaux sous le soleil, 
et en meme temps qui ne suprimerait point ... que-dis-je ? qui continuerait 
de respecter et de respirer la fleur sobre, au fin parfum, des Pope, des Boileau, 
des Fontanes, ce jour-la le critique complet serait trouve; la reconciliation 
entre les deux ecoles serait fake. 3 

1 Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 121. 

3 Essay on Criticism, 11. 630 ff. 3 Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 115. 

69 



70 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

In brief, he dreams of a critic who can reconcile within himself humanism 
and determinism, science and tradition, aesthetics and history. Sainte- 
Beuve fulfils in some measure his own dream, for while he may not have 
made an integral union of the two schools, he did create a working 
federation between them. He fears, however, that any attempt to mix 
this critical oil and water will result in a mere emulsion and not in a true 
stable compound. Indeed, in the very passage quoted above his own 
logic drives him on into the rather sad admission: "Mais je demande 
l'impossible; on voit bien que c'est un reve." 1 Elsewhere, in the well- 
known article on Bayle, the source for much of the information about 
what Sainte-Beuve demanded of the critic, he says: 

Nous ne saisirons et ne releverons en lui que les traits essentiels du genie 
critique qu'il represente a un degre merveilleux dans sa purete et son plein, 
dans son empressement discursif, dans sa curiosite affamee, dans sa sagacite 
penetrante, dans sa versatilite perpetuelle et son appropriation a chaque chose.* 

We must superadd these finer though secondary qualities to the list of 
those essential in his ideal critic. 

When we come to gather Sainte-Beuve's specifications as to the equip- 
ment and qualifications of the critic, it seems necessary to begin with 
his doctrine of the critic's spontaneity — even in the old phrasing that 
the critic is born and not made. It is first by virtue of native power 
that the ideal critic penetrates to the heart of life and art, and this 
intuitive penetration leads him into an appreciation not otherwise 
attainable. 3 "L'homme de talent Test par nature" and he means this 
to apply in the field of criticism as in other fields. 4 The critic's intuitive 
discernment must be recognized as a type of genius. "La nature cree 
le grand critique; de meme qu'elle confere a quelques hommes le don 
du commandement. D'autres influent plus sensiblement, agitent, 
debordent, entralnent; le vrai juge, le vrai critique, par quelque mots 
etablit leu balance. " 5 Lacking this native gift the critic is seriously 
limited: " Je ne sais pas de preuve plus sure qu'on n'est pas fait pour 
etre un vrai critique, que d'aller preferer d'instinct dans ce qu'on a 
sous les yeux un demi-talent a, un talent et, qui pis est, a un genie." 6 
I have italicized in this passage the word of greatest importance; when 
Sainte-Beuve speaks of judgment as instinctive he seems to place it on 
the fundamental basis as a native gift — to make of it, as it were, another 
sense. Indeed, he says precisely : " L'autorite du vrai critique ce compose 

1 Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 116. * Portraits contemporains, V, 457. 

2 Portraits litter aires, I, 365. s Chateaubriand, II, 115. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, III, 65. 6 Nouveaux lundis, III, 117 



THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE CRITIC 



71 



de bien des elements complexes comme pour le grand m&iecin; mais 
au fond il y a la un sens apart." 1 Criticizing certain figures of speech 
in a style that he is studying, he exclaims: "Quand on ne sent pas une 
fois ce qu'il y a de bizarre dans ... ces nuances incoh6rentes, on ne le 
sentira jamais." 3 The important word here is sent, which carries an 
implication of physical perception. Of Grimm, whom he admired, he 
says: "Quand la nature a une fois doue quelqu'un de cette vivacite de 
tact et de cette susceptibilite d'impression, et que l'imagination creatrice 
ne s'y joint pas, ce quelqu'un est ne critique, c'est-a-dire amateur et 
juge des creations des autres." 3 

He points out, as evidence that the fundamental elements in the 
critical faculty are congenital and not acquired, the fact that very 
ignorant persons sometimes arrive at the most penetrating appre- 
ciation by mere intuition; 

J'aime le naif dans les jugements. Je remarque comme les jeunes filles 
du peuple sentent souvent bien la poesie. La petite boheme qui ne sait pas 
lire juge a merveille des vers de Chenier, de Lamartine, de Mme Valmore; 
elle s'ecrie aux plus beaux, aux passiones surtout, et aux plus tendres. Et 
quant a Victor Hugo — 

him, too, she judges with correct appreciation. 4 Of course, however, the 
fact that an untrained person may by intuition reach a correct estimate 
in artistic matters does not argue that he who aspires to be an authori- 
tative critic can forego any aspect of educational equipment. 

The critic's sensitiveness to impression has its active as well as its 
receptive side. Sainte-Beuve, telling a story of Pope to the effect that 
attempting to read aloud a passage from Homer he was so moved by 
its beauty and pathos that tears interrupted his reading, comments: 
"nul exemple ne nous prouve mieux que le sien combien la faculte de 
critique emue, delicate, est une faculte active. On ne sent pas, on ne 
percoit pas de la sorte quand on n'a rien a rendre. Ce gout, cette sen- 
sibilite si eveillee, si soudaine, suppose bien de l'imagination derriere." s 
The sensitive critical faculty serves in literary history as a barometer to 
forecast the spiritual and artistic weather, or rather climate, of a period. 
The acute critic is able to tell in advance the moral meteoric condition 
of his age: 

II est des organisations delicates et nerveuses qui sentent vingt-quatre 
heures a l'avance les changements de temps, qui les devinent en quelque sorte. 

l Chateaubriattd, II, 115. 

2 Causeries du lundi, VII, 339. 4 Cahiers, p. 32. 

3 Ibid., p. 311. s Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 118. 



72 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

Tel doit etre l'esprit du critique par rapport au jugement du public. II faut 
que sa montre avance de cinq minutes au moins sur le cadran de l'H6tel-de- 
Yille. 1 

The critic is not then a poek avorti, or, according to Coleridge's phrase, 
a failure in letters turned reviewer, or any other kind of an artist who 
has failed in his chosen career and taken to criticism with a view to 
avenging himself upon an unappreciative world. Balzac wrote of a 
certain sculptor who had not succeeded in his art: "II passa critique, 
comrne tous les impuissants qui mentent a leurs debuts." Sainte-Beuve 
proceeds: 

Ce dernier trait peut etre vrai d'un artiste sculpteur ou peintre qui. au 
lieu de se mettre a 1'ceuvTe, passe son temps a disserter et a raisonner; mais, 
dans Tordre de la pensee, cette parole,, qui revient souvent sous la plume de 
toute une ecole de jeunes litterateurs, est a la fois une injustice et une erreur. 2 

The implications are plain. The critic, like the dramatist, the 
novelist, the poet, is a creator, since he too works with words and ideas, 
building them into edifices of his own — a creator in a different manner, 
perhaps, but not in a different measure from those other literary artists. 
He may borrow ideas, but what creative worker does not, upon occasion, 
borrow? He quotes Pope, who says that true taste among critics is 
as rare as true genius among poets and that they each draw a separate 
and yet kindred inspiration from heaven — one inspiration for judging 
others, the other inspiration for creating poetry. Sainte-Beuve pro- 
ceeds, translating Pope, " Quelques-uns ont d'abord passe pour beaux 
esprits, ensuite pour poetes; puis, ils se sont faits critiques, et ils se sont 
montres tout uniment des sots sous toutes les formes." He then adds 
for himself: 

Cela est d'avance une reponse a. ces artistes orgueilleux et vains. impatients 
de toute observation, comme nous en avons connu, et qui, confondant tout, 
ne savaient dormer qu'une seule definition du critique; "Quest un critique? 
C'est un impuissant qui n'a pu etre artiste.*' Tout artiste presomptueux avait 
trop interet a cette definition du critique: il s 'en est suivi, pendant des annees, 
la pleine licence et comme l'orgie des talents 

Not only is the critic not an artiste avorti, but he should ideally have 
little or none of the peculiar inspiration of the imaginative artist in 
him: "II ne faut pas avoir le talent trop empresse quand on est critique; 

1 Portraits contetnporains, V, 457. 

3 Causerits du lundi, II, 455 . * Xouteaux lundis, VIII, 119. 



THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE CRITIC 



73 



autrement des que Ton commence a lire quelque chose, voila. le talent 
qui part, qui se jette a. la traverse, et Ton n'a pas fini de juger." 1 

Une des conditions du genie critique ... c'est de n'avoir pas d'art a soi, 
de style; ... quand on a un style ... on a une preoccupation bien legitime de 
sa propre ceuvre, qui se fait a travers Tceuvre de l'autre, et quelquefois a ses 
depens. Cette distraction limite le genie critique. ... De plus quand on a un 
art a soi ... on a un gout decide qui ... atteint vite ses restrictions. 2 

Is it not, indeed, almost a commonplace that a practitioner of any 
art or profession makes a poor judge of it, since in most cases he cannot 
divest himself of his attitude toward it; he forms his opinion in advance, 
he has prejudged and is therefore prejudiced ? Sainte-Beuve has spoken 
on this point: 

J'ai souvent pense que le mieux pour le critique qui voudrait se reserver 
le plus de largeur de vues, ce serait de n'avoir aucune faculte d'artiste, de peur 
de porter ensuite dans ses divers jugements la secrete predilection d'un pere et 
d'un auteur interesse. 3 

He regarded it as a serious misfortune for the criticism of his own 
day that economic conditions often forced creative writers, under the 
necessity of making a living, to take up the pen of the critic, doing 
violence to their own talent, coarsening their finer sensibilities, and at 
the same time lowering the standard of criticism. This latter would 
follow as a matter of course when the field of criticism was invaded 
by writers who held criticism in contempt, regarding their own essays 
in it as mere potboilers, reserving their care and enthusiasm for their 
own creative work. 4 

The critical faculty shares three qualities with the creative faculty: 
a keen perception of reality and of essential value, a keenness of per- 
ception which the ordinary man does not possess — " l'enthousiasme et 
l'amour du beau," 5 and the love of truth; and is equally 'Tennemi des 
engouements et de tous les charlatanismes." 6 

1 Causeries du lundi, XI, 505. 

2 Portraits litteraires, I, 376. 3 Nouveaux lundis, I, 10. 

* Sainte-Beuve when he started his critical career seems to have had something 
of this in him, for he claimed to be primarily a poet. This is just what happens in 
the case of the poet: "Le journal ... a crSe* une charge qui reclame imperieusement 
son homme; c'est celle de critique universel et ordinaire. Vous l'etes ou vous ne l'etes 
pas par disposition premiere et naturelle, qu'importe! il vous faut a toute force le 
devenir. Les poetes, lorsqu'on fait d'eux des critiques ... ont une difficult6 particu- 
li&re a vaincre; ils ont un gout personnel tres-prononceV' etc. (ibid., VI, 296). 

5 Causeries du lundi, VII, 308. 6 Ibid., I, 387. 



74 SAINTErBEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

A main essential qualification of the critic is a power of perceiving 
differences, an appreciative sense of the many, and an ability to 
enter into, and experience imaginatively, very diverse circumstances and 
states of consciousness. Diderot possessed in a marvelous degree this 
faculty of demi-metamorphosis "qui est le jeu et le triomphe de la 
critique, et qui consiste a se mettre a la place Pauteur et au point de 
vue du sujet qu'on examine, a lire tout ecrit selon V esprit qui Va dicti." 1 
Sainte-Beuve uses the figure elsewhere of the critic as a winding river 
which reflects on its placid bosom everything it passes. He says of 
De Laprade: 

Ce qui m'y frappe avant tout et partout, c'est combien l'auteur, soit 
qu'il raisonne, soit qu'il interroge l'histoire litteraire, ne comprend que sa 
propre maniere d'etre et sa propre individualite; par cela meme il nous avertit 
qu'il n'est pas un critique. 2 

'He says of Taine that he is too single-minded to be a first-rate critic. 3 
His exhortation to his colleagues in criticism is: "Critiques curieux, 
imprevus, infatigables, prompts a tous sujets, soyons a notre maniere 
comme ce tyran qui, dans son palais, avait trente chambres; et on ne 
savait jamais dans laquelle il couchait."* The well-equipped critic has 
the ability to put himself at will in the place of another; it is his unques- 
tioned privilege and duty to do this at need. He has the privilege, also 
unquestioned if not indeed unquestionable, of changing camps at will, 
of displaying first the converse then the reverse of every medal. That 
Sainte-Beuve writes with perfect penetration of Mme du Deffand 
constitutes no reason why he should not write with equal penetration 
of her deadly rival and mortal enemy Mile de Lespinasse: 

Le critique ne doit point avoir de partialite et n'est d'aucune coterie. II 
n'epouse les gens que pour un temps, et ne fait que traverser les groupes divers 
sans s'y enchainer jamais. II passe resolument d'un camp a l'autre, et de 
ce qu'il a rendu justice d'un cote, ce ne lui est jamais une raison de la refuser 
a ce qui est vis-a-vis. Ainsi, tour a tour, il est a Rome ou a Carthage, tantot 
pour Argos et tantot pour Ilion. 5 

And elsewhere : 

Le genie critique ... ne reste pas dans son centre ou a peu de distance; 
il ne se retranche pas dans sa cour, ni dans sa citadelle, ni dans son academic; 
il ne craint pas de se mesallier; il va partout, le long des rues, s'informant, 
accostant; la curiosite l'alleche ... il est ... tout a tous. ... Mais gare au 
retours! ... Pinfidelite est un trait de ces esprits divers et intelligents. 6 

1 Causeries du lundi, III, 301. 4 Portraits contemporains, V, 457. 

a Nouveaux lundis, I, 9. s Causeries du lundi, II, 121. 

3 Ibid., VIII, 80. 6 Portraits litttr aires, 1, 371. 



THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE CRITIC 75 

His absolute freedom the ideal critic combines with a universal toler- 
ance — to understand is to forgive — and he is indifferent to passions: 

Cette indifference du fond, il faut bien le dire, cette tolerance prompte, 
facile, aiguisee de plaisir, est une des conditions essentielles du genie critique, 
dont le propre, quand il est complet, consiste a courir au premier signe sur le 
terrain d'un chacun, a s'y trouver a. Paise, a. s'y jouer en maitre et a connaitre 
de toutes choses. 1 

In his political and literary career Sainte-Beuve availed himself of 
the privilege he claimed for the critic, having many times shifted his 
adherence: " J'ai vecu de bien des vies litteraires, et j'ai passe de douces 
heures d'entretien avec des hommes instruits de plus d'une ecole; il me 
semblait que j'etais de la leur, tant que je causais avec eux"; 2 but he 
never gave any group the right to say, "He is one of us," he never sur- 
rendered himself completely, except once in his youth, when he adhered 
for a time to Hugo and the romanticists. 

The critic's chameleon-like quality of adjusting himself to different 
camps, different persons, different subjects must not fail him when it 
is a question of adjusting himself to different aspects of the same sub- 
ject, to the same subject under different lights or from diverse points of 
view: 

II est heureux pour les critiques de n'etre point comme Montesquieu qui 
ne tirait jamais, disait-il, du moule de son esprit, qu'un seul portrait sur chaque 
sujet. Nous autres, nous avons a revenir sans cesse sur ce que nous avons 
deja traite, a revenir vite, il est vrai, mais toujours par un coin plus ou moins 
vif . Nous avons a tirer sur un meme fond mainte epreuve, et dont aucune ne 
soit semblable. II ne faut point trop paraitre redire, ni encore moins se con- 
tredire, il faut 6tre dans un courant, dans un recommencement continuel. 3 

His essays on Bossuet are sufficient witness to the fact that Sainte-Beuve 
was eminently skilful in treating a subject from many points of view. 4 
The really great critic has personal weight and influence, the mental 
and moral integrity to give authoritatively an opinion and then to 
defend it. He should feel certain of himself: 

Johnson avait un bon jugement et Vautorite necessaire pour le faire valoir, 
qualites essentielles a tout critique et que les critiques de nos jours paraissent, 
au contraire, trop oublier: car, avec tous leurs beaux et brillants developpe- 
ments, ils trouvent souvent le moyen de n'avoir ni jugement ni autorite. Ville- 
main, dans ses jugements contemporains, n'a jamais ete que flatterie et 
complaisance. Du bon sens sterling, voila ce qu'avait Johnson, et c'est a quoi 
toutes les malices et les fines ironies ne suppleent pas. 5 

1 Ibid., p. 369. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, V, 332. « Cf. ibid., Ill, 45; XIII, 248, etc. 

* Causeries du lundi, X, 55. s ibid., XI, 490. 



76 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

He calls this certainty and ability to give judgment "cette irritabilite 
de bon sens et de raison qui fait dire 'non' avec vehemence." 1 All the 
great critics have in matters of taste this " susceptibilite vive, passionnee, 
irritable," 2 which leads them, of course, in extreme cases to dogmatism. 
But dogmatism is only the accentuation of a virtue; it is the manifesta- 
tion of the critic's consciousness of his own authority: 

II y a dans cette autorite et dans l'importance de celui que Pexerce, quelque 
chose de vivant, de personnel, qui ne tient pas uniquement a ce qu'il ecrit et 
qui ne s'y represente pas toujours, en entier, mais qui tient de plus pres a 
rhomme meme, a son geste, a son accent. Les memes choses dans d'autres 
bouches n'ont le meme sens ni le meme poids.3 

The born critic has thus an oracular power which the made critic does not 
share: "Mme. d'Epinay disait, 'II ne me reste aucun doute lorsque 
M. Grimm a prononce,' " and Sainte-Beuve adds, "Ce caractere d'oracle 
est assez naturel a tous les maitres critiques." 4 Personal authority is 
necessary to the judge: "Or, cela est triste a dire, le critique est un 
juge, il n'est pas unhomme de qualite ni un chevalier," 5 and this personal 
authority makes the critic the power in art which he ought to be; con- 
scious of the rectitude of his verdicts, he feels himself able and willing 
to condemn the bad and to praise the good. 

The real credentials of the critic born to be a critic and possessing 
the requisite personal authority and independence of opinion are found 
in his judgments on his contemporaries. It is comparatively easy to 
judge Racine or Bossuet, for opinion is settled about them, but when one 
has to frayer le chemin the critic's metal is tested: 

Le don de la critique a ete accorde a quelques-uns ... ce don devient 
meme du genie lorsqu'au milieu des revolutions du gout, ii s'agit de discerner 
avec nettete, sans aucune mollesse, ce qui vivra, si dans une ceuvre nouvelle 
l'originalite reelle sufiit a racheter les defauts ... et d'oser dire tout cela 
avant tous et le dire d'un ton qui impose et se fasse ecouter. 6 

Whatever his native gifts, the critic will need to be prepared for his 
work by the widest accumulation of knowledge and the most pains- 
taking discipline, since it is true that "le plus sou vent nous ne jugeons 
■pas les autres, nous jugeons nos propres facultes dans les autres." 7 
Then it behooves us in every possible sense to increase our knowledge 

1 Causeries du lundi, II, 19. 4 Causeries du lundi, VII, 305. 

2 Ibid., VII, 310. s Nouveaux lundis, II, 12. 

3 Chateaubriand, II, 115. 6 Chateaubriand, II, 115. 

7 Cahiers, p. 34; cf. Anatole France, La vie littiraire, Vol. I, p. iv. 



THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE CRITIC 77 

and refine our tastes. Sainte-Beuve insisted that in order to approxi- 
mate an understanding of our predecessors, or for that matter of our 
contemporaries, we must be able to enter into their consciousness, in a 
sense to impersonate them. To this end a store of knowledge practically 
limitless is necessary: "La critique est un metier a part qui demande 
bien des precautions et des preparations." 1 It asks for erudition, for 
the widest possible knowledge of life, for experience in the other arts — no 
amount and no kind of training come amiss in the critic's calling. Of 
Bayle, Sainte-Beuve says that while he was little attracted by mathe- 
matics which "absorbe — detourne un esprit critique, chercheur et a 
la piste des particularites," he was benefited by his study of dialectics. 2 
It is in Saint-Beuve's opinion a profound misfortune for our age that 
so many voices are raised in assumed authority whose owners are not 
experienced and not educated. Such persons do not attempt to judge 
music or painting; they leave that task to those having some technical 
knowledge; but everybody seems willing to offer judgments on literature: 

Les ceuvres et productions de Pesprit, quand elles eclatent point au theatre 
par de grandes et vivantes creations, ... sont d'une appreciation infinement 
plus discrete et plus voilee, ... et elles exigent, pour etre senties convenable- 
ment, des esprits plus avertis de longue main et plus prepares. II y faut tant 
de preparation en effet, que je me dis quelquefois qu'au milieu de cette vie 
pressee, affairee, bourree de travaux et d'etudes, ... ceux meme, qui sont du 
meme metier ... n'auront pas toujours le temps, l'espace, la liberte et l'elas- 
ticite d'impressions necessaires pour etre justes envers leurs devanciers. 3 

While it is true that this wide sweep of knowledge and experience is 
important for the critic's best equipment, that his studies in any science, 
in philosophy, in religion never come amiss, giving him that most 
desirable sense of authority and mastery, 4 yet it is naturally in the field 
of literature itself that the literary critic will perfect himself. A wide 
and rich knowledge of literary history and familiarity with the essentials 
of literary tradition constitute his indispensable preparation. 5 

1 Correspondance, I, 310; Nouveaux lundis, IX, 66. He repeats this same out- 
burst elsewhere: "Nous vivons dans un temps ou chacun se croit critique etsepose 
comme tel ... c'est le pis-aller du moindre grimaud (comme on disait du temps de 
Boileau), du moindre apprenti littSraire que de trancher de l'Aristarque en feuilleton" 
{Chateaubriand, II, 114). 

2 Portraits litteraires, I, 381. 3 Nouveaux lundis, IX, 66. 

4 Causeries du lundi, II, 379, where he praises de Broglie as critic for his great 
knowledge and immense capacity for labor. 

5 Nouveaux lundis, I, 305. 



78 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

First in order of importance is the respectful study of the ancients 
and veneration of our legacy from them: 

La vraie et juste disposition a leur egard est un premier fonds de respect, 
et tout au moins beaucoup de serieux, de circonspection, d'attention, une 
patiente et longue etude de la societe, de la langue, un grand compte a tenir 
des jugements des Anciens les uns sur les autres. 

And he adds an urgency that we treat the classics not from our point of 
view but from theirs. 1 The achievement of this point of view is a busi- 
ness of arduous scholarship and disciplined sympathy: 

N'aimer en litterature qu'a s'occuper du present et du livre du jour, ... 
c'est suivre et courir le succes, ce n'est pas aimer les Lettres elles-memes, dont 
le propre est la perpetuite, la memoire, et la variete dans le souvenir. 2 

He avers that this achievement does not lose its value when we have 
appreciated the classics, but persists as the best possible apparatus for 
appreciating and judging our literary contemporaries. 

The genuine critic who aims at real and full sincerity must be 
unhampered by social relations and obligations, private or political. 
He must not tie himself up in embarrassing friendships nor commit 
himself to narrowing hostilities; he must maintain the independence of 
his judgment. Of Hoffmann, Sainte-Beuve says: "Ua bien des qualites 
du vrai critique, conscience, independance, des idees, un avis a lui." 3 
Elsewhere he says: "Le critique a des amis, je l'espere, mais il ne doit 
pas avoir d'amities litteraires quand tneme> et qui le determinent ou 
l'enchainent d'avance a un jugement trop favorable." 4 La Harpe, 
for example, having fallen in love with Mme de Genlis, abrogated all 
critical intelligence, a weakness which brings down on him Sainte- 
Beuve's unqualified scorn. 5 Bayle on the contrary was never in love 6 
and is to be admired for his "parfaite independance, independance par 
rapport a, Tor et par rapport aux honneurs." 7 The ideal savant "vit 
seul, sans famille, sans enfants," 8 free from the burden either of dire 
poverty or of cloying wealth: 

Un critique ne doit pas avoir trop d'amis, de relations de monde, de ces 
obligations demandes par les convenances. Sans etre precisement des corsaires 

1 Nouveaux lundis, I, 305. s Causeries du lundi, in, 28. 

2 Ibid., VI, 25. 6 Portraits litteraires, I, 379. 

3 Causeries du lundi, I, 385. 7 Ibid., p. 386. 

4 Nouveaux lundis, II, 12. 8 Nouveaux lundis, IX, 98. 



THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE CRITIC 



79 



comme on l'a dit, nous avons besoin de courir nos bordSes au large: il nous 
faut nos coudees f ranches. 1 

He must be equally detached from friends and from enemies in order 
to be neutral or at least impartial: "Etre critique, c'est tout soumettre 
a Pexamen, et les idees et les faits, et meme les textes; c'est de ne pro- 
ceder en rien par prevention et enthousiasme." 2 One may see that in 
this matter Sainte-Beuve placed his requirement so high that he himself 
fell laughably short of it. He hated, and hated cordially, not to say 
vehemently. In reading his essays one has constantly to discount this 
or the other statement because of the element of personal spite and 
prejudice that enters into it. While he was the most catholic of critics 
he was by no means the most impartial. It is curious that he was not 
aware of this, for he obviously and sometimes ostentatiously tried to be 
fair. 3 But his ideal critic "ne devrait pas £tre envieux. Plus il y a de 
talents et plus j'en comprends, plus j'ai raison de dire: Mon affaire est 
bonne." 4 He agrees entirely with Pope, whom he thus paraphrases: 

Pour etre un bon et parfait critique, Pope le savait bien, il ne suffit pas 
de cultiver et d'etendre son intelligence, il faut encore purger a tout instant 
son esprit de toute passion mauvaise, de tout sentiment Equivoque; il faut 
tenir son ame en bon et loyal £tat. s 

1 Causeries du lundi, II, 107. He envies Scherer because, living as he did in 
Geneva, he was able to speak his mind with no personal animus involved (ibid., XV, 
57). Sainte-Beuve himself, through the medium of Juste Olivier, the Geneva pub- 
lisher, had such an outlet for a number of years and succeeded in telling the truth or 
at least in giving his candid opinion on many people whom he would otherwise have 
been afraid to attack. Cf. Harper, Sainte-Beuve, p. 266. 

2 Nouveaux lundis, II, n. 

3 He repeats many times that he is trying to be neutral and impartial. Let a 
few instances suffice. He is going to speak, he says, of Pontmartin: "Mon desir 
serait de le faire dans un parfait esprit d'impartialit£" (I have quoted this before, 
ibid., p. 1). Again, a propos of Pontmartin, who has called Sainte-Beuve's criticism 
"neutral," the latter writes: "Je ne mettrai pas d'insistance a me dSfendre, car c'est 
bien moi qui represente cette neutralite, que j'aimerais aussi entendre appeler tantot 
impartiality et tantot curiosite d 'intelligence et d 'observation" (ibid., p. 9). In still 
another passage he claims to be able to write impartially of Marie Antoinette because 
he has been raised neither royalist nor republican (ibid., VIII, 315). Pontmartin's 
main fault as a critic is attacking his subjects with a purpose. Bayle, on the other 
hand, is one of the finest examples of lack of prejudice, of impartiality in the critic 
(Portraits littir aires, I, 369). 

4 Portraits contemporains, V, 457. 

5 Nouveaux lundis, VIH, 121. 



80 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

This true critic having purged bitterness and other evil passions from his 
soul is urbane and moderate: "Le critique acariatre, fut-il exacte, n'y 
saurait pretendre (a, l'urbanite)." 1 He censures severely those critics 
whose vocabulary contains only harsh words, contending that they would 
better not speak at all than merely to condemn, 2 for a critic, let us 
repeat, should always have in him a place pour un certain contraire, une 
oreille pour Vaccusi. In the Bayle article Sainte-Beuve adds the following 
points to his analysis of the essential qualities of the critic: Disillusion- 
ment, 3 a universal and indiscriminate curiosity, 4 common sense, 5 and 
freedom from religious and patriotic prejudice, 6 but he finds that Bayle, 
even Bayle, the great critic, was completely lacking in aesthetic 
sentiment. 7 

In summary, Sainte-Beuve would like to stipulate for his critic the 
inborn critical faculty, a sort of superior sense which, so far as it goes, 
is infallible; that kind and amount of dramatic imagination that enables 
him to put himself in the place of another, to envisage other circum- 
stances and other times; an authoritative personality, giving him con- 
fidence and certainty; as much learning as may be, especially great 
knowledge of literature, its history and its tradition; independence, 
keeping him from entangling alliances and oppositions; an ability to 
keep his judgment unbiased and as kindly as possible; eagerness for 
beauty and unfailing openness to impression. 

It would be very interesting and profitable to assemble in some order 
all that Sainte-Beuve said about actual critics, particularly those who 
have influenced him or especially interested him. But the large mass 
of material would unduly prolong this dissertation and quite upset its 
balance. It does seem essential, however, to glance at the subject to 
the extent of naming those critics who stand highest in his estimation. 
Pre-eminent among those whom he admires is Goethe, "le plus grand 
des critiques modernes et de tous les temps," 8 "ce roi de la critique";' 

1 Causer ies du lundi, III, 69. 

3 Cf. Nouveaux lundis, VI, 316, where he attacks Planche for his conceit and his 
unbearable harshness. Cf. also Causeries du lundi, XI, 464: "Genin est un tape-dur, 
il a tou jours besoin de taper sur quelqu'un ... ces gens-la manquent de l'amenit6 
et de la tegSrete", qui ne devraient jamais se separer des qualites vraiment litteraires." 

3 Portraits litteraires, I, 366. 

4 Ibid., pp. 369-70. 7 Nouveaux lundis, IV, 108. 
s Ibid., p. 383. 8 Ibid., in, 265. 

6 Ibid., pp. 377, 381. ' Causeries du lundi, III, 42. 



THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE CRITIC 



81 



"notre maitre a tous." His supremacy among critics is attested by his 
ability to exemplify in his own work everything he adjudges good: 

Goethe est le seul poete qui ait eu une faculte poetique a. l'appui de chacune 
de ses comprehensions et de ses intelligences de critique, et qui ait pu dire a 
propos de tout efe qu'il juge en chaque genre. " J'en ferai un parfait echantillon 
si je le veux." 1 

The extent of Sainte-Beuve's admiration must be gauged by comparing 
the boundless enthusiasm of these passages with his customary conscious 
moderation. 

Next to Goethe in his estimation, and undoubtedly more important 
in his influence, comes Boileau, the greatest of French critics: "S'il 
m'est permis de parler pour moi-meme, Boileau est un des hommes qui 
m'ont le plus occupe depuis que je fais de la critique, et avec qui j'ai 
le plus vecu en idee." a To Sainte-Beuve, Boileau presents himself as 
the ideal critic, conditioned only by the limits of the century which 
circumscribed his knowledge. The great nineteenth-century critic felt 
a close kinship with his master of the seventeenth; it was his hope and 
his endeavor to perform for his own time the noble office performed for 
the classical age by Boileau. 

Of great importance in Sainte-Beuve's estimation and deeply 
influential with him were Bayle 3 and Mme de Stael. So great was his 
interest in the latter and his admiration of her work that she has worthily 
been called the heroine of the Lundis. Close below these two in Sainte- 
Beuve's gallery of critics comes Diderot, of whom he frequently expresses 
cordial admiration, calling him the founder of appreciative criticism, 
and Voltaire, whom he named "le plus grand esprit critique depuis 
Bayle." 4 Among later Frenchmen he frequently mentions Fauriel, 
Joubert, and Fontanes. 5 

Prominent among those who influenced Sainte-Beuve's critical 
thought was Alexander Pope. 6 It should not be a matter for surprise 
that he, the greatest representative of the English classical school, should 

1 Nouveaux lundis, I, 10. On his admiration for Goethe and kinship with him 
see Babbitt, Masters of Modern French Criticism, p. 127. 

2 Causeries du lundi, VI, 495 . 

3 As to Bayle's kinship with Sainte-Beuve, Babbitt is again illuminating (op. cit., 
pp. 121 ff.). See also the article "Du genie critique et de Bayle" in Portraits lit- 
teraires, I, 364. 

A Portraits litteraires, I, 376. 

5 Causeries du lundi, I, 376. 6 Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 121, etc. 



82 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

have appealed to Sainte-Beuve, whose philosophical processes were on 
the whole English rather than French, and whose predilections for the 
classical tradition may be said to be a distinguishing characteristic of 
his later period. Of other English critics whom he knew, only Johnson 
and Jeffrey need be named. 

With the exception of Goethe, Sainte-Beuve obviously knew little 
of German criticism. There is some indication that he knew something 
of the Schlegels and there is casual mention of Lessing. But the reflec- 
tions are too few and fugitive to be collected. 

The roster of the names of Sainte-Beuve's critical masters is, then, 
Goethe, Boileau, Mme de Stael, Diderot, Voltaire, Bayle, Pope, and 
Johnson. 






VI. PRECEPTS AND PROC&D&S 

The caption chosen for this section permits the collecting in one 
place of many matters, all important, some vital, in the criticism of 
Sainte-Beuve, which found no natural place in the more closely formu- 
lated divisions. There will be included here obiter dicta, conditions for 
special cases, the practical order of procedure in actual writing, personal 
reactions, and other such matter classifiable together only as being 
pertinent to Sainte-Beuve's ideas and methods of work. The material, 
discussion and notes, is arranged as nearly as possible in logical order, 
that is to say, in the order in which they would come into play in the 
critical process, as choosing a subject, clearing the ground, the method 
and point of attack, limiting and denning the subject, et ainsi de suite. 

First as to Sainte-Beuve's method of choosing his subject and his 
favorite type of subject: his choice was only in part guided by his own 
fancy. He was a journalist writing for a living and obliged to handle 
timely subjects; his vehicle was the official organ of the government, 
and political considerations often dictated his choice. His own taste 
inclined him more toward pure literature, but his adherence to the 
government of the second empire forced him, in the Causeries du lundi 
and in the Nouveaux lundis, to concern himself with statesmen, with 
generals, with diplomats, public and official persons and their affairs. 
It is true, as has been noticed before, that he interpreted the term 
"literature" very liberally, so that we find him studying, for instance, 
the Journal de la sante du roi Louis XIV 1 or the Touareg du nord of 
Henri Duveyrier, 2 and he says elsewhere: 

Ma vraie ambition dans mon genre a ete celle-ci: etendre la critique 
litteraire a tous ceux qui ont ecrit, peintres, architectes, naturalistes. ... De 
cette facon, on etend le champ de la critique litteraire autant que possible, 
on n'est ferme par aucun cote et Ton est, par consequent, dans le veritable 
esprit moderne. 3 

At times he seemed to feel that his position as critic for the govern- 
ment and in the official journal constituted an obligation, as for example: 
" Condamne par circonstances a ecrire sur tous sujets, je ne choisis pas, 
je traite les sujets qui s'offrent d'eux-memes a ma recontre; tachant de 



1 Nouveaux lundis, II, 360. 
3 Ibid., IX, no. 



3 Correspondance, II, 122. 
83 



84 SAINT'E-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

faire honnetement et en conscience mon metier, voila tout." 1 His cor- 
respondence with the librarians of the Imperial Library throws some 
interesting light on this matter. But not even his somewhat dogged 
if not disinterested patriotism could persuade him to write on 
Napoleon Ill's Life of Caesar; he said he could not handle it without 
too great severity. During the later years of his connection with the 
government he never forgot that "Le Moniteur s'affiche au coin des 
rues," 2 and he restrained himself with suitable discretion. 

Dans cette place qui m'est accordee aux pages du Moniteur, que puis-je 
faire de mieux que de m'occuper, meme au risque de remonter assez haut 
dans le passe, des grands noms qui ont honore notre litterature et notre his- 
toire ? II me semble quelquefois qu'il nous est permis d'etaler des estampes 
et des images aux yeux des passants, au bas des murs du Louvre. Lesquelles 
choisirions-nous ? Certes, les plus celebres et les plus riches en souvenirs, les 
plus historiques, les plus en accord avec le caractere et Pesprit du monument. 3 

In this passage we note two elements in his choice of a name for 
discussion, the element of its greatness and the element of its accepta- 
bility to the reading public, for he always hoped for some public approval. 
Hence the spark which set off Sainte-Beuve's train of thought, the occa- 
sion for the formulation and presentation of his studies, the excuse for 
the publication of his opinions, the opportunity for him to serve his 
public, from whatever point of view one regards the essay, was usually 
the appearance of a new book or a new edition of an old book. 

The first etape, and an arbitrary though very actual determining 
factor in his choice, was the relation of the subject to the regime in 
control. This consideration was, however, largely inhibitive, deciding 
rather what names he would not treat. As to the more positive and 
specific grounds upon which he chose: 

On peut etre critique de bien des sortes: (a) sur des 6crivains d'autrefois, 
sur d'anciens sujets qu'on traite et qu'on rajeunit sans les alterer et sans les 
fausser; (b) sur des auteurs modernes et des sujets a. l'ordre du jour. 4 

And elsewhere he says: 

U est loin le temps ou, la critique francaise commencant a peine, l'Abbe de 
Saint-Real declarait qu'on ne devait critiquer par ecrit que les morts, et qu'il 
fallait se borner a juger en conversation les vivants. Aujourd'hui on se juge 
tous indifferement les uns les autres, en public et par ecrit, vivants, amis de 
la veille et confreres. Tachons du moins que ce soit avec equite et sincerite. 5 



1 Carres pond ance, I, 301. 

2 Causeries du lundi, X, 53. 

3 Ibid., IX, 80. 



4 Nouveaux lundis, I, 263. 
s Ibid., p. 3. 



PRECEPTS AND "PROCSdSS" 



85 



I have before and from another point of view alluded to the fact 
that Sainte-Beuve chose for comment mediocre and minor men rather 
than the greatest. This statement has been made by many students 
and frequently with a certain derogatory implication. Babbitt points 
out that, though Sainte-Beuve again and again paid tribute to the great 
geniuses, he was above all scientifically interested in the more ordinary 
individual; "he cannot refrain from a certain satisfaction when an 
author and his work are less than unique and are therefore more capable 
of being explained." 1 Sainte-Beuve treats with just as much compla- 
cency the second-rate writers as those of the first rank, and he excels 
rather in discovering differences than degrees of genius; he can do better 
in pointing out peculiarities than in measuring greatness. 3 Many pas- 
sages, however, serve to place this matter in a truer light, summing 
up convincingly his grounds for choosing less well-known men; such 
grounds are that they alone needed the services of criticism, the greatest 
masters having been adequately treated, 3 and the fact that as a scientist 
Sainte-Beuve delighted in a man who, being less than unique, could be 
analyzed. 4 

A vrai dire, M. Coulmann me plait, dans ses Memoires, par ce c6te meme 
d'absence de toute originalite; il est l'expression honnete et facile du milieu 
ou il vit, et il nous en marque la temperature assez exacte, sans y meler la 
resistance ou le surcroit d'un caractere trop individuel. 5 

This less striking person being more really the product of his society 
than the man of genius is a better starting-point for those social studies 
in which Sainte-Beuve was eminently interested — "La critique lit- 
teraire, qui doit 6tre heureuse et fiere de s'elever toutes les fois qu'elle 
rencontre de grands sujets, se plait pourtant, par sa nature, a ces sujets 
moyens qui ne sont point pour cela mediocres, et qui permettent a la 
morale sociale d'y penetrer." 6 The complement of this statement 
appears in this passage: 

Les grands hommes sont sujets a faire illusion sur l'epoque qu'ils 6clairent 
et qu'ils remplissent brillament jusqu'a eteindre quelquefois ce qui les entoure; 
les hommes secondaires, et pourtant essentiels ont l'avantage de nous faire 
penetrer avec eux, sans eblouissement et sans faste, dans les parties restees a 
demi obscures, et dans les rouages memes de la machine dont ils etaient, a 
certain degre, un des ressorts. 7 

1 See Babbitt, Masters of Modern French Criticism, pp. 160 ff. 

2 Nouveaux lundis, III, 18. 

3 See the section on "The Functions of Criticism," p. 8. 

4 Babbitt, op. cit., p. 163. 6 Causeries du lundi, VII, 188. 

5 Nouveaux lundis, IX, 141. 7 Nouveaux lundis, III, 420. 



86 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

Further he complains that French criticism has been too timid and 
conservative, keeping too much to the well-known subjects and the 
well-worn paths of criticisms, not venturing into these less-frequented 
regions where he feels it his duty to go. 1 In spite of the fact that he 
says, " je n'elude pas systematiquement tous les grands sujets qui pas- 
sent," 3 he "eludes" nearly all of the greatest names. 

He attempts no profound study of Moliere, he approaches Goethe almost 
solely on the side of social intercourse through the letters of Bettina and the 
conversations with Eckermann ; he makes the same exception for Shakespeare 
that most of us make for the great literatures of the East, as something which 
the shortness of life exempts us from including in our world of thought; he 
has little to say about Dante, and that little inadequate; he manages to create 
for himself a sphere of philosophical activity in which we miss the luminous 
presence of Plato, and a train of dramatic tradition which can scarcely be 
said to reach back to Sophocles. These are serious omissions for which no 
amount of interest in Chapelle and Bachaumont, Rivarol, Dangeau and Mile 
de La Valliere can compensate. But with the exception of Moliere no French 
peak of genius was too high for his exploring foot. 3 

As regards extended and deliberate studies of the great men whom 
Harper mentions here, he is quite correct. Still it must be pointed out 
that these names and others only less great were constantly at Sainte- 
Beuve's pen point, exercising a dispersed but pervasive influence, 
receiving from him much incidental appreciation, and towering con- 
stantly in the background as standards, constituting a court of supreme 
appeal. 4 

Again, while it is true that very frequently Sainte-Beuve occupied 
himself with minor writers whom he rejoiced in as " specimens" more 
easily handled and more illustrative of principles than the anomalous 
geniuses, it is not the poor writers whom he advises us to study, but 

1 "Pourquoi sommes nous ainsi faits en France, que lorsqu'un homme distingue" 
et de talent n'est pas entre a un certain jour dans le courant de la vogue et dans le 
train habituel de l'admiration publique, nous devenions si sujets a le negliger et a le 
perdre totalement de vue ? Et au contraire, ceux qui sont une fois connus, adoptes 
par l'opinion et par la renommee, nous les avons sans cesse a la bouche et nous les 
accablons de couronnes" {Causeries du lundi, X, 446). Once the man has become 
famous we all see genius in everything he does. This, too, is notable: " ... on pousse 
trop a l'admiration quand meme, on ne juge plus; une fois le mot genie prononc6, 
tout est accepts, proclame," etc. (Correspandance, H, 94). 

2 Nauveaux lundis, IV, 392. 3 Harper, Sainte-Beuve, p. 321. 

4 For such appreciation see on Moliere, Nouveaux lundis, V, 277; on Shakespeare, 
Causeries du lundi, XV, 336. 



PRECEPTS AND "PR0CSd6S" 



87 



rather worthy and honorable writers of the second rank. The very- 
poor writers, the sots et les derni-sots 1 he would rather neglect completely 
than merely condemn. 

In view of the fact that Sainte-Beuve was thus interested primarily 
in the man as a manifestation of his times, it is only natural that as 
large a proportion as three-fourths of the essays should be taken up 
with memoirs, letters, and biographies. But while his large concern 
was with these he did not neglect the consideration of pure literature; 
indeed, he always felt that he was primarily a literary critic. 3 Memoirs, 
history, letters, novels, dramas, "eloquence" he revels in, but rarely 
poetry. 

Je cause rarement ici de poesie, precisement parceque je Pai beaucoup 
aimee et que je Paime encore plus que toute chose; je craindrais d'en mal 
parler, ou du moins de n'avoir pas a en bien parler, a en dire assez de bien. 3 

To be sure the attraction of poetry is too great and its place in society 
too important to warrant his neglecting it altogether, nor indeed would 
his personal taste permit that extreme. "De ce que j'ai beaucoup aime* 
autrefois la poesie; de ce que je l'ai aimee comme on doit Paimer quand 
on s'en m£le, c'est-a-dire trop, ce n'est pas une raison aujourd'hui pour 
n'en plus parler jamais." 4 

So with characteristic inclusiveness of view Sainte-Beuve explains 
that while feeling himself first of all a literary critic, his duty to society 
demands that he treat all manner of non-literary subjects. Taking 
up for study Guizot's Discours sur la revolution he defends his choice 
thus: 

Si je venais a passer sous silence ce Discours pour parler ... d'un roman 
ancien ou nouveau, on aurait droit de penser que la critique litteraire se recuse, 
qu'elle se reconnait jusqu'a un certain point frivole, qu'il est des sujets qu'elle 
s'interdit comme trop imposants ou trop epineux pour elle; et ce n'est jamais 



1 Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 122. 

2 "Si le Discours de M. Guizot etait purement politique, je le laisserais passer 
sans le croire de mon ressort, fidele et a mon r61e, a mon gout qui sont d'accord pour 
s'en tenir a la literature " (Causer ies du lundi, I, 311). This is again one of those 
strange contradictions in Sainte-Beuve which are so frequent. He always left a 
loophole for himself, continually forestalling his critics by making room pour un certain 
contraire; in this case, too, he even contradicts himself, saying elsewhere that we must 
not confine ourselves to pure literature (Nouveaux lundis, VI, 138). 

3 Causeries du lundi, IV, 51. 

4 Nouveaux lundis, II, 247. 



88 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

ainsi que j'ai compris cette critique, legere sans doute, et agreable tant qu'elle 
le peut, mais ferme et serieuse quand il le faut et autant qu'il le faut. 1 

When opportunity presented itself he must as a journalist and a 
public servant ask himself on the very threshold of his preparation to 
write, whether or not the time was ripe for a discussion of this particular 
subject. For instance, we have all loved Beranger, he says, but "le 
temps n'est-il pas venu de degager un peu toutes ... ces complaisances, 
de payer a 1'homme, a, l'honnete horn me qui a, comme tous, plus ou moins, 
ses faibles et ses faiblesses ... de lui payer une part," etc. 3 On the 
other hand Mme Sand is still alive and active and "le moment, pour la 
critique, d'embrasser ce puissant talent dans son cours, et de le penetrer 
dans sa nature, n'est pas venu, selon moi." 3 

Also of Balzac: 

Une veritable etude sur le romancier celebre qui vient d'etre enleve, et 
dont la perte soudaine a excite Pinteret universel, serait tout un ouvrage a ecrire, 
et le moment, je le crois, n'en est pas venu. Ces sortes d'autopsies morales ne se 
font pas sur une tombe recente, 4 surtout quand celui qui y est entre etait 
plein de force, de fecondite, d'avenir, et semblait encore si plein d'ceuvres 
et de jours. 5 

One has to be equally careful not to be premature 6 nor atarde, but must 
seize, for the study of his author, the psychological moment; in the 
case of writers no longer living as well as of those still alive, a moment 
sufficiently removed from the time of his death to give a proper perspec- 
tive, yet not so far removed as to embarrass the gathering of contemporary 
opinion and evidence. There are, to be sure, certain classic authors 
who are to Sainte-Beuve always de Vordre du jour, for example 7 Mon- 
taigne and others of the galaxy of fixed stars in the French firmament. 
Sainte-Beuve often found it difficult to speak with complete honesty 
and fulness because he so often discovered that his judgment was at 

1 Causeries du lundi, I, 312. Contrast, however, this boiUade: "Le traite" de la 
Resignation [of St. Augustine] d'ailleurs, echappe a la critique proprement dite; il 
est entremele de prieres, et des que la priere commence, la critique litt£raire expire" 
(Nouveaux lundis, I, 251). 

'Causeries du lundi, II, 286. 3 Ibid., I, 369. 

4 Another contradiction ! This is true only of the great who will not be forgotten 
anyway. The small need this notice. He says of M. de Latouche: "II est de ceux 
dont il convient de parler a l'heure ou ils disparaissent, car il est compliqu£, difficile 
a comprendre, et la posterity n'a le temps de se souvenir que de ce qui se dStache avec 
unite - et nettete* {ibid., Ill, 474). 

s Ibid., II, 443. 6 Nouveaux lundis, I, 64. 7 Ibid., II, 156. 




PRECEPTS AND "PROCfiDfiS" 89 

variance with accepted opinion. In such cases it required courage and 
tact for a journalist to speak his mind without apparent impertinence 
and with any hope of a sympathetic hearing, especially in those cases 
in which a sort of cult had grown up about a popular idol. For instance, 
when he comes to discuss Montesquieu he says that he has written much 
about the eighteenth century without so far any elaborate treatment 
of him because "il est un de ces hommes qu'on n'aborde qu'avec crainte, 
a cause du respect reel qu'ils inspirent et de l'espece de religion qui s'est 
faite autour d'eux." 1 Lacordaire is equally difficult to treat, for he too 
had inspired unquestioning enthusiasm in the youth of his generation. 

La critique litteraire, avec ses respects et ses reserves, s'arrete etonn£e 
devant de tels elans enthousiastes; elle y regarde a deux fois avant de les 
contrarier. On hesite quand on marche seul, ... et qu'on n'a pour soi que le 
groupe si dissemine des gens senses, qui ne se connaissent pas entre eux, a 
venir admirer trop faiblement le chef d'une milice blanche eblouissante," etc. 2 

But when there is need the critic must overcome his reluctance, face the 
possible disapproval, and speak, "il faut absolument que le grain de sel 
sorte, si grain de sel il y a." 3 

Sainte-Beuve feels that a similar courage and sense of duty must 
inspire the critic who enters a new field. "On hesite toujours a se 
mettre en avant quand l'opinion de la foule ne nous a pas fraye le chemin; 
il faut meme, pour cela, une espece particuliere de courage, ce que 
j'appelle le courage du jugement." 4 Grimm he praises for his courage 
in attacking new subjects. 

Un excellent critique ... et venant le premier dans ses jugements; 
n'oublions pas cette derniere condition. Quand la reputation des auteurs est 
etablie, il est aise d'en parler convenablement ... mais a, leurs debuts, ... et 
a mesure qu'ils se developpent, les juger avec tact, ... predire leur essor ou 
deviner leurs limites, ... c'est la le propre du critique ne pour l'etre." 5 

And it is precisely that which is the hardest task of the critic. But he 
is less than the well-equipped critic until he acquires the courage of his 
convictions and feels himself well enough established to do the unpopular 
thing, 

il semble qu'il faille que tout talent, tout genie nouveau entre ainsi dans les 
sujets l'epee a, la main, comme Renaud dans la foret enchantee, et qu'il doive 
f rapper hardiment jusqu'a ce qu'il ait rompu le charme; la conquete du vrai 
et du beau est a ce prix. 6 

1 Causeries du lundi, VII, 41. 3 Nouveaux lundis, IV, 393. 

3 Ibid. The grain de sel, the candid opinion of the critic. 

* Causeries du lundi, X, 476. s Ibid., VII, 287. 6 Ibid., p. an. 



go SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

When the critic has made choice of his subject, and when, if he has 
chosen a new or an unpopular task, he has screwed his. courage to the 
sticking-place, he is ready to prepare himself to give a judgment. Prepara- 
tion consists in steeping himself in his subject and in its connections, 
gathering all manner of facts concerning his man, personality, history, 
environment, and reputation. This acquisitive process has naturally 
received much attention in another section of this dissertation, 1 to 
which the following important caution may be added: 

Vous qui etes appele a ecrire sur l'art, rappelez-vous bien ceci: La vie 
humaine, la vie sociale a existe sous toutes sortes de formes ... quand elle 
s'est evanouie, rien n'est si difficile que de la ressaisir. 3 

Sainte-Beuve would emphasize the importance of collecting the 
facts about a man's reputation and of studying what has been said about 
him, particularly when the subject is the critic's contemporary: 

La vraie critique a Paris se fait en causant; c'est en allant au scrutin de 
toutes les opinions, et en depouillant ce scrutin avec intelligence, que le 
critique composerait son resultat le plus complet et le plus juste. 3 

His desire for a solid foundation for authoritative opinions led him 
to place tremendous emphasis on the scholarly, eruditional, investigating 
aspect of the critic's task. But he was never long without reminding 
us that this process is only a necessary preliminary to the final task: 

Tout en profltant de notre mieux des instruments, un peu onereux parfois, 
de la critique nouvelle [that is, scientific and historical criticism], nous retien- 
drons quelques-unes des habitudes ... de l'ancienne critique, accordant la 
premiere place dans notre admiration et notre estime a l'invention. 4 

He takes pride in having availed himself of the results of other scholars' 
work: "Moi-meme j'en ai largement use en mon temps (des travaux 
autrui) ; je ne me suis fait faute de marcher avec le secours et l'appui 
des autres." 5 While he declares that he was not born to be an erudit, 
one of those who have defriche le moyen dge, he does not scorn such 
scholars, nor minimize their labors; indeed, he plucks with gratitude 
the fruit of their endeavors. Almost paradoxically, however, Sainte- 
Beuve says that when the critic has assembled all this knowledge he 
must put it into the background so that he can attack his work with 
vital interest and unjaded taste. Starting into his task of criticizing he 
ought to "s'inquieter avant tout des interets du talent." 6 

1 See section on "Scientific Criticism." 

3 C auseries du lundi, XI, 516. 

3 Ibid., I, 448. s Nouveaux lundis, V, 471. 

« Ibid., XV, 378. 6 Ibid., in, 17. 



PRECEPTS AND "PROC£d£S" 91 

The following passages throw some additional light on Sainte- 
Beuve's teaching as to the critic's need to saturate himself in the affairs 
of his author: "Ce n'est qu'en laissant s'ecouler un long espace de temps 
que Ton arrive a, connaitre a, fond la personne qu'on etudie." 1 "II est 
plus difficile qu'on ne le croirait de saisir tout d'une venue les grands 
hommes en tout genre: il faut du temps et passer par plus d'un degre* 
pour arriver a les embrasser dans leur ensemble." 2 As regards his own 
case, "pour comprendre un homme et pour le peindre j'ai besoin de 
m'y reprendre jusqu'a deux et trois fois, qu'importe, me permettrai-je 
de dire ainsi, pourvu que j 'arrive au but, qui est la verite." 3 

One among the first steps in the critical process is to free one's mind 
from preconceptions arising from the domination of fixed ideas. One 
should judge afresh in each case. 

II y aurait un article facile a faire sur ces memoires de Catherine (de Russie), 
et c'est celui que je ne ferai pas. II n'y aurait pour cela qu'a partir de quelques 
principes generaux et convenus, a se montrer rigide et inexorable pour tout 
ce qui s'6carte de nos mceurs, de notre etat de societe ... on arriverait ainsi a 
un effet certain et a une unite de conclusion qui seduit et satisfait toujours 
a premiere vue les lecteurs superficiels et les esprits tout d'une piece. Mais 
la nature humaine est moins simple 4 

and refuses to be shaped in the mold of a fixed idea. 5 

Le devoir de la critique dans tout sujet est avant tout de l'envisager sans 
parti pris, de se tenir exempte de preventions, fussent-elles des mieux fondees, 
et de ne pas sacrifier davantage a celles de ses lecteurs." 6 

The fundamental shortcoming of Nisard's Histoire de la litterature 
frangaise is that it is written with a preconceived notion of the French 
spirit, and upon this Procrustean bed the historian forces every author 
he handles. 7 The fact that Michelet writes history to prove or exemplify 
an idea locates him at the opposite critical pole from Sainte-Beuve him- 
self. 8 The most prevalent of fixed ideas are those that concern morality 
and those that determine the social conventions; all these Sainte-Beuve 

1 Cahiers, p. 145. 3 Cahiers, p. 145. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, X, 23. * Nouveaux lundis, II, 179. 

5 " L'inconvenient du systSme de La Rochefoucauld est de donner pour tous les 
ordres d'action une explication uniforme et jusqu'a un certain point abstraite, quand 
la nature, au contraire, a multiplie" les instincts, les gouts, les talents divers, et qu'elle 
a color6 en mille sens cette poursuite entrecrois6e de tous, cette course impetueuse et 
savante de chacun vers l'objet de son d6sir" (Causeries du lundi, XI, 411). 

6 Nouveaux lundis, XII, 31. 

7 Causeries du lundi , XV, 3X1. 8 Nouveaux lundis, II, 112. 



92 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

would abrogate when they are merely traditional or artificial; one must 
speak " sans aucune gene, sans aucune de ces f ausses reserves qu'imposent 
les ... respects humains hypocrites." 1 

The rigid and unimaginative adherence to principle passes into a 
slavish observance of rules and precepts, a state of things which Sainte- 
Beuve saw in the neo-classicists who blindly and uncreatively followed 
tradition. To him the greatest disaster that could befall the mind 
was stagnation, the encysting of one's self in the shell of fixed principles 
whether of morality or of art, where one reaches the mere negation of 
progress, impedes the flux, and becomes automatically incapable 
of comprehending life or its manifestation in art. The remedy is, of 
course, to keep moving, to keep an open and hospitable mind, to subject 
to constant re-examination inherited and early acquired ideas; as 
Matthew Arnold would say, to allow a stream of fresh ideas to play 
freely over one's stock notions. The most conspicuous danger of the 
fixed idea is that it offers an invitation, difficult to resist, to falsify life. 
"Leroux m'a fait comprendre qu'il y a chez les systematiques convaincus 
une heure mauvaise ou le charlatanisme se glisse aisement, et ou, si 
Ton n'y prend pas garde, l'indifference sur le choix des moyens com- 
mence." 2 To mutilate or to manipulate the truth to fit his personal 
view was to Sainte-Beuve a capital crime in a critic. This form of 
charlatanism is at its worst when the critic yields to the cheap temptation 
to please at all costs: 

Biographe litteraire, je souffre toutes les fois que je vois des critiques 
eminents a tant d'egards et en possession d'un art merveilleux, ... ne songer 
a tirer parti des faits que pour les fausser dans le sens de l'effet passager, et de 
l'applaudissement. Qu'on retourne la chose comme on le voudra; dans le 
cas present, il y a flagrant delit de talent, de malice et d'inexactitude. 3 

If in attacking his subject the critic must impose upon it no fixed ideas 
of his own, he must equally refuse to allow himself to be overpowered 
by his subject. He must follow its lead, but he must keep a clear head: 

II y a deux manieres de prendre les choses et les personnages du monde 
et de l'histoire; ou bien de les accepter par leur surfaces, ... (ou bien) de les 
fouiller et de les sonder quoi qu'ils en aient; de les mettre a jour et de les demas- 
quer impitoyablement, 4 

1 C 'auseries du lundi, XV, 285. 3 Cahiers, p. 50. 

3 Causeries du lundi, VI, 453. For similar utterances on the mistake of having 
fixed ideas in attacking a subject, see also ibid., IV, 29; VII, 229. 

4 Ibid., Ill, 275. 



PRECEPTS AND "PROCfiDfiS" 



93 



and not be imposed upon by any external decorum, any surface appear- 
ance, whether of a man or an epoch. However kindly the critic may 
be, he should not allow his generosity to accept any man at his own 
valuation without examination and confirmation: 

II y a deux manieres d'aborder Carrel: ... II y a une maniere plus poetique, 
plus genereuse peut-etre, plus magnifique, qui consisterait a. voiler les defauts 
a. faire ressortir les belles et grandes qualites ... mais il y a un autre point de 
vue ... qui permet de voir les defauts, d'entrevoir les motifs, de noter les 
alterations, et qui, sans rien violer du respect qu'on doit a une noble memoire, 
restitue a l'observation morale tous ses droits. 1 

He returns many times to this idea, the refusal to take a man at his own 
valuation; he enjoys the thought of destroying an egotistic author's 
heroic pose, of revealing him as merely human: 

Je crois ... que quand on le peut, et quandle modele a pose suffisamment 
devant vous, il faut faire les portraits les plus ressemblants possible, les plus 
etudies et les plus reellement vivants, y mettre les vermes, les signes au visage, 
tout ce qui caracterise une physionomie au naturel, et faire part out sentir le 
nu et les chairs sous les draperies, sous le pli meme et le faste du manteau ... 
Je crois que la vie y gagne et que la grandeur vraie n'y perit pas. 2 

A critic who possesses this ability is of the true critical lineage : " honnete, 
scrupuleuse, impartiale, nee de Bayle." 3 

Impartiality, indeed, is an indispensable virtue of the critic. Writing 
of Pontmartin, he says: 

Mon desir serait de le faire dans un parfait esprit d'impartiality: car ... 
cette neutrality meme que M. de Pontmartin m'a si souvent reprochee, devient, 
je l'avoue, un de mes derniers plaisirs intellectuels. ... Ne rien dire sur les 
ecrivains meme qui nous sont opposes, rien que leurs amis judicieux ne pensent 
deja et ne soient forces d'avouer et d'admettre, ce serait mon ambition derniere. 4 

He felt keenly that the critic ought never to allow his personal dislike 
to bias his opinion, as did Taine in his presentation of Pope: " J'aimerais 
en litterature a proportionner toujours notre methode a. notre sujet 
et a. entourer de soins tout particuliers celui qui les appelle et qui les 
merite." 5 He himself endeavors in studying Flaubert's Salammbo to 
"oublier notre liaison avec l'auteur, notre amitie meme pour lui" and 
to do his subject justice purely on its merits. 6 



1 Ibid., VI, 84. 

2 Nouveaux lundis, II, 1 7. 

3 Causeries du lundi, I, 379. 



4 Nouveaux lundis, II, 1. 
s Ibid., VIII, 106. 
6 Ibid., IV, 31. 



94 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

So far these are preliminary and partly negative operations. Having 
chosen his subject, having investigated it in all those relations that 
promise light, having freed his mind from fixed ideas, having laid aside 
as far as possible prejudice favorable or unfavorable, having forgotten 
friendship and enmities alike, the critic comes to a more positive activity. 

As the opening maneuver of his direct attack he desired to set up 
the actual boundaries of his theme, to determine with approximate 
definitions the delimitations of his field. Life is so complex, so infinitely 
detailed, a man can be regarded under so many different aspects, that 
it becomes necessary to define and limit one's task "et d'abord je tracerai 
un cercle autour de mon sujet, et je dirai a ma pensee et a ma plume: 
Tu n'iras pas plus loin." 1 One must have the resolution and the self- 
denial necessary for sifting out irrelevant material, no matter how 
interesting, and for shutting his eyes to the large mass of extraneous 
knowledge. The critic's essay should be homogeneous and unified, of one 
inspiration, contemplating his man or book under one consistent aspect. 
If he is not able to make such an essay, either because he lacks the neces- 
sary logic or because his subject demands discursive treatment, he should 
make divisions and give a series of studies. " Au point ou je suis arrive 
dans la carriere scientifique et litteraire de M. Littre, je suis oblige de 
prendre un parti et de diviser l'homme, sans quoi je ne pourrais le suivre 
de front dans tous les ordres de travaux." 2 Bossuet also he treats in a 
series of studies, regarding him successively and separately as historian, 
as preacher, as letter writer, and as bishop. 

He considers it more necessary so to circumscribe and divide, in the 
work of minor writers, because the whole of their work is not worth 
studying: 

II convient d'observer un certain art dans Farrangement des reputations: 
les grands hommes sont faits pour etre connus et etudies tout entiers; mais, 
quand un homme n'a eu qu'un coin de talent, il est inutile de s'etendre sur 
tout ce qui n'est pas ce talent meme. 3 

As a part of the delimiting process he would try to get at the salient 
characteristics of his author, and he would hope to show his faults and 
virtues not in absolute relief but relatively and in proportion. " Quant 
a moi, je pense qu'il convient, dans la biographie d'un homme, dans son 
portrait fidele, de conserver aux choses 1' importance relative qu'elles 
eurent dans sa vie et dans ses pensees." 4 

1 Causeries du lundi, HE, 384. 2 Nauveaux lundis, V, 226. * Ibid., VII, 378. 

4 Ibid., XII, 54. He says of his treatment of d'Aubigne: "Je ne dirai 
aujourd'hui que ce qui me semble necessaire pour presenter cette forte figure en son 
vrai jour, sans exagerer ni ses vertus, ni sa purete, ni ses merites, mais sans rien oublier 
non plus d'essentiel en ce qui le distingue" {Causeries du lundi, X, 313). 



PRECEPTS AND "PROCtiDfiS" 



95 



His hope and endeavor, whatever his subject, were to define it "par 
ses traits principaux et par ce qui la caracterise entre toutes. Ce 
caractere est le plus souvent delicat a saisir et a determiner." 1 Such a 
defining of the author's salient characteristics and of the point of view 
from which he is to be approached, such bringing into relief of his char- 
acteristic features, is the most important thing the critic can do until 
the moment comes for final judgment. 3 

In any event, Sainte-Beuve felt that the first approach to an author 
should be on the side of his praiseworthy qualities rather than on the 
side which called for censure: 

Avec tout personnage historique, il f aut s'attaquer d'abord aux grands c6tes ; 
je ne sais si j'aurai le temps de marquer chez Retz toutes les faiblesses, toutes 
les infirmites, toutes les hontes meme, et de les fletrir; mais je me reprocherais 
de n'avoir pas des l'abord designe en lui les signes manifestes de superiorite 
et de force, qui enlevent Padmiration quand on l'approche, et quoi qu'on en ait. 3 

This approach to a man on the side of his excellence is, moreover, 
a question of expediency, since it is most difficult to secure and maintain 
a truly critical poise when one studies the faults first: 

Une des choses auxquelles il est le plus difficile de s'accoutumer en jugeant 
les hommes, c'est de maintenir la part de leurs talents ou de leurs qualites, 
apres qu'on a reconnu celle de leurs defauts ou de leurs vices. 4 

Having appreciated his good qualities we must at once recognize 
and admit his defects, so as to erect a complete image of the real man. 
Chateaubriand, for example, must suffer some diminishing of reputation, 
for he has been estimated much too highly. Of course a critic when he 
is weighing faults must be scrupulous, lest he pass beyond the bounds 
of reason and justice: 

Ce qu'il faudra faire alors pour maintenir les justes droits de sa renommee, 
ce sera, en bonne critique comme en bonne guerre, d'abandonner sans diffi- 
culty toutes les parties de ce vaste domaine qui ne sont pas vraiment belles 
ni susceptibles d'etre serieusement defendues, et de se retrancher dans les 
portions tout a fait superieures et durables. 5 

When he makes out his critical balance sheet, the student must 
be sure that he has really distinguished debits from credits. It is by 
no means an unnecessary caution to warn the critic to make sure that 

1 Nouveaux lundis, V, 416. 2 Causeries du lundi, II, 443. 3 Ibid., V, 53. 

4 Ibid., p. 166. Contrast this passage from his article on Pontmartin: "Je suis 
force de commencer mon examen ... par son cote le plus faible," etc. (Nouveaux 
lundis, II, 5). 

s Causeries du lundi, I, 177. 



96 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

his subject really possesses the qualities for which he is praising him. 
"Nous tacherons ... done de ne pas tout mettre a, la fois sur quelques 
grands ecrivains. Nous tacherons, en parlant d'eux, que l'eloge porte 
sur la qualite principale; car il y a, meme chez les grands auteurs, une 
qualite principale." 1 It is desirable to be cordial and enthusiastic when 
possible, and to admire when one can, "mais encore faut-il savoir 
dinger sa louange et ne pas la faire monter en fusee. 2 

But only discrimination gives value to enthusiasm. An author 
should not be commended for the delicacy of his art, where force and 
grandeur are his qualities. In the work of Pascal you may legitimately 
praise the art of Provinciates; but in the Pensees you must praise the 
force and moral energy. You must praise the impetuosity and fulness 
of Bossuet's speech, but the distinction and grace of Fenelon's. The 
fact that the critic sees certain fine qualities in his subject must not 
blind him to the presence of others, different, but also admirable. 
"Quand un homme s'est rendu celebre par un talent reconnu dans un 
genre, on a peine a lui en reconnaitre, et a lui en accorder un autre." 3 
To recognize Bossuet as a great preacher should not preclude the recog- 
nition of him as a historian; to applaud Victor Hugo as a poet and to 
realize that his truest fame rests upon his poetry should not prevent the 
critics from acknowledging his success as a novelist. 

Then having fortified himself with the courage and authority of 
these rules, the critic should for the rest place himself in the hands of his 
author: 

Respectons la volonte de Tartiste, son caprice, et apres avoir exhale notre 
leger murmure, laissons-nous docilement conduire ou il lui plait de nous mener. 
Mais sachons du moins de quels elements il disposait a l'origine, afin d'etre a 
meme de juger ce qu'il en a fait et ce qu'il y a ajoute de son propre fonds.* 

Paradoxical as it may seem in view of Sainte-Beuve's principle for 
measuring work by the great classical standards, and his fondness for 
assigning a man his "place" either implicitly or explicitly, the foregoing 
passage might fairly be taken as a summary of his critical ideal. Gather 
all possible knowledge about your author, eliminate the trivial and 
irrelevant, eradicate your own prejudices and eccentricities, isolate his 
significant or characteristic quality or service, and, for the rest, follow 
his lead, take him as he is, let him speak for himself. In several impor- 
tant passages Sainte-Beuve seems to say that, having accepted an author 

1 Causeries du lundi, XV, 380. Compare this with his doctrine of the facidtt 
maitresse. 

2 Ibid., p. 380. 3 Cahiers, p. 172. 4 Nouveaux lundis, IV, 35. 



PRECEPTS AND "PROCfiDES" 97 

for discussion, the critic is at his mercy; that just in so far as the critic 
is a scientist he is at the mercy of his facts, which he must not alter or 
manipulate — he is in fact a simple rapporteur 1 of what he finds. We 
must, of course, bear in mind that this is with Sainte-Beuve a formal 
theory, a logically constructed ideal: 

Je suis critique, et, en avancant dans la vie, j'ai le malheur de sentir que 
je m'attache de plus un plus au vrai en lui meme, et que je n'entre plus dans 
le jeu ... en prenant la plume, je tache de rendre compte hautement de ce 
qui est, de maniere que meme les mecontents ne puissent me contredire. 2 

And here follows an uncompromising statement of this idea: "II en est 
de l'analyse critique comme de l'analyse chimique: on est exacte ou on 
ne Test pas." 3 And again, 

Un critique pur est entierement a la merci de son examen, du moment 
qu'il y a apporte toutes les conditions d'exactitude et toutes les precautions 
necessaires; il trouve ce qu'il trouve, et il le dit tout net; le chimiste nous 
montre le resultat de son experience, il n'y peut rien changer. 4 

The truly scrupulous critic feels that he is honest only when he has 
told the whole truth. Sainte-Beuve censures La Bruyere for that form 
of dishonesty: 

Ce Portrait de Fontenelle par La Bruyere est pour nous une grande lecon; 
il nous montre comment un peintre habile, un critique penetrant, peut se 
tromper en disant vrai, mais en ne disant pas tout, et en ne devinant pas assez 
que, dans cette bizarre et complexe organisation humaine, un defaut, un travers 
et un ridicule des plus caracterises n'est jamais incompatible avec une qualite" 
superieure." 5 

Sainte-Beuve's doctrine of the qualite maitresse is central in his 
critical theory and has been discussed in another place. But important 
as he held it to isolate this master-quality, he would not have it eclipse 
for the critic other less dominant qualities. "Je crains toujours dans 
ces portraits de pousser a la caricature, ce qui pour quelques-uns des 
personnages serait facile, mais ce qui est plein d'inconvenients et ce qui 
derange pour le lecteur la vraie proportion des choses." 6 

These last few passages serve to reinforce and to restate much of 
the matter presented in the previous study of the function of criticism 
and of Sainte-Beuve as a scientific critic. Indeed we may say that he 
is stating the same truth, this time, however, from the point of view of 
practical procedure rather than as an ideal result, or a theoretical method. 

1 Ibid., VI, 5. * Ibid., II, 409. 

2 Causeries du lundi, VIII, 292. s Causeries du lundi, III, 322. 
* Nouveaux lundis, I, 265. 6 Ibid., VHI, 439. 



98 SAINTE-BEUVE S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

Sainte-Beuve complains of those critics and biographers who distort 
the perspective of their subject, or, to borrow a figure from still another 
art, transpose their theme into a wrong key. "La premiere loi d'un 
portrait est de ne pas le faire dans un ton oppose a celui du modele." 1 
"Je me suis dit sou vent que les portraits devaient etre faits selon le 
ton et l'esprit du modele," 2 so that one should not treat -Victor Hugo in 
a classical spirit, nor Andre Chenier in a tone of romanticism; a por- 
trait of De Vigny should be "bien simple et tout ideal." 3 Speaking of 
Beaumarchais he says that "il faut se garder d'etre systematique, car 
lui meme il ne l'etait pas." 4 Sainte-Beuve was himself peculiarly gifted 
in the matter of catching and preserving the tone of his model. He 
knew and valued highly the service of the wisely chosen quotation, of 
letting his man speak for himself at the significant and crucial points: 
" Je ne me pardonnerais point d'avoir parle si longuement de BufTon sans 
en rien citer, et le lecteur aurait droit de m'en vouloir." 5 " Je voudrais, 
selon mon habitude, dormer quelque idee, par une citation, du genre 
d'esprit et de finesse de cet excellent conteur," etc. 6 " II y a un charmant 
passage que je veux pourtant citer, car je suis de ceux qui citent, et qui 
ne sont contents que quand ils ont decoupe dans un auteur un bon 
morceau, un joli echantillon." 7 It is partly this method of skilful 
analysis, accompanied by copious quotation, that constitutes what we 
may call Sainte-Beuve's virtuosity in keeping the "tone" of his model. 
But he is impelled to sound a warning against the misuse of this device, 
citing Montesquieu as a horrible example: 

II arrive souvent qu'il cite inexactement et pour Feffet, comme Chateau- 
briand le fera plus tard; cela arrive aux hommes d'imagination qui se servent 
de l'erudition sans pouvoir s'y assujettir ni la maitriser. On prend. en lisant, 
une note avec esprit, avec saillie; et ensuite, en composant, on se donne une 
peine infinie pour faire passer sa route royale par l'endroit de la note illustre 
ou meme quelquefois de Fhistoriette legere. 8 

And one is tempted to inquire how often even Sainte-Beuve permitted 
himself to make a wide critical detour for the sake of introducing some 

1 Nouveaux lundis, VI, 82. 

3 Ibid., p. 398. "Mignet commet de 16geres inexactitudes ou des fautes de 
nuances dans les couleurs qu'il emploie" (Causeries du lundi, VEIL 302). " Je voudrai 
ne forcer en rien les tons" {ibid., IV, 29). He criticizes If. Walckenaer severely for 
his infideUU de ton in criticism (ibid., VI, 171). 

J Nouveaux lundis, VI, 398. reaux lundis, XI, 11. 

4 Causeries du lundi, VI, 201. ' Causeries du lundi, XV, 215 . 
slbid.,X, *Ibid.,VTL, : 



PRECEPTS AND "PROCfiDGS 



99 



particularly spicy bit. The advantages of the practice of quoting, 
however, far outweigh the dangers and mistakes such as he points out. 
If we could hope to sum up a matter necessarily so disjointed and 
heterogeneous, the following passage of Sainte-Beuve's own would serve 
as such a summary of his Precepts et Procedes: 

L'esprit dans lequel le livre est concu est un bon esprit; j'appelle ainsi 
celui qui consiste a ne pas arriver sur le sujet avec une prevention et un systeme, 
a se penetrer de l'esprit meme de l'epoque qui est en cause, a recueillir tous les 
temoignages, a s'eclairer de toutes les depositions, et a nous rendre avec 
gravite, avec bon sens et moderation, le r£sultat de cette enquete si delicate et 
si compliquee. 1 

A study of Sainte-Beuve's critical vocabulary opens up to view a 
most profitable and tempting field. A lexicon of the important critical 
terms he most frequently uses, together with sufficient quotation to 
illuminate them from their contexts — such terms as reality, beauty, 
harmony, tone, vrai, verite, vraisemblance, nettete, and others — would 
clarify and render stable words whose exact content or connotation in 
many passages is vague and inconstant. It would throw valuable light 
on both the logic and the art of his critical processes. But so long and 
important a piece of work could not be undertaken within the scope of 
this dissertation. Three of his terms, however, demand consideration: 
the differentiations he made when he adopted and defined the terms 
"Attic," "Asiatic," and "urbane" are so central in his thinking and so 
operative in his work that we cannot in justice neglect to present them 
here. The discussion finds its best beginning in this statement: "Le 
genre attique est surtout Toppose de l'asiatique, Turbanite est surtout 
le contraire de la rusticite." 2 The mingling of Atticism, the Hellenic 
quality of beauty and harmony, with urbanity, the Roman quality 
of common sense and moderation, produces the characteristic and ideal 
French quality: 

Mais l'atticisme, mais Turbanite, mais le principe de sens et de raison qui 
s'y mele a la grace, ne nous en separons pas. Le sentiment d'un certain beau 
conforme a notre race, a notre education, a notre civilisation, voila ce dont il 
ne faut jamais se departir.3 

It is "Atticism" that he commends in Pascal so often and so highly; 
he praises it in Hamilton, calling him "un des ecrivains les plus attiques 

1 Ibid., XV, 339. 2 Cahiers, p. 172; cf. also Causeries du lundi, XV, 404. 

*Ibid., XV, 362. He gives a short history of "Atticism" in France, ML, 
XII, 481. 



ioo SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

de notre litterature." 1 In Greek, Lysias and Xenophon are for excel- 
lence the exponents of the "Attic" style; "en francais Mme de Caylus, 
Mme de La Fayette sont des modeles d'atticisme." 2 "L'atticisme, 
chez un peuple, et au moment heureux de sa litterature, est une qualite 
legere qui ne tient pas moins a ceux qui la sentent qu'a celui qui ecrit." 3 
In the following passage he again indicates the component elements of 
the tradition he loved: 

Terence est le lien entre Purbanite romaine et l'atticisme des Grecs. Qui 
dit urbanite, dit politesse, elegance, un bon gout dans le badinage, de Penjoue- 
ment plus qu'un rire ouvert et deploye. Qui dit attiques a proprement parler, 
entend des ecrivains nus, sobres, chastes de diction (comme Lysias ou Xeno^ 
phon) qui n'appuient pas, ... qui ne scintillent pas. lis rappellent et reflechis- 
sent dans leurs ecrits cette plaine de PAttique, d'une maigreur elegante et 
fine, d'un ciel transparent. Quels sont les ecrivains attiques en francais dont 
nous puissions comparer sans trop de contresens la diction a celle de Terence ? 
II en est tres-peu. Mme de Lafayette, Fenelon, Mme de Caylus, en sont 
certainement ; Le Sage aussi pour Gil Bias, et Abbe Prevost pour Manon 
Lescaut. Au XVIII me siecle, la race des attiques se perd; Voltaire est, quand 
il le veut, le modele de Purbanite; mais l'atticisme leger ... cette esquise 
simplicite n'a plus sa place. 4 

It was the writers who were not indigenous — Rousseau, Bernardin 
de Sainte-Pierre, and later Chateaubriand — who chiefly contributed 
to the eclipse of Atticism in France. 5 "L'atticisme est proprement 
l'oppose du genre asiatique trop surcharge d'ornements." 6 Asiaticism 
is the new, superabundant, flamboyant, over-decorated style which he 
finds in Rousseau, in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, in Chateaubriand, the 
style of Lamartine in the Girondins which Sainte-Beuve specifically 

1 Causeries du lundi, I, 95. 3 Ibid., XI, 520. 

3 Ibid., p. 521. He speaks of Thiers as being really French in so far as his style 
is Attic (ibid., XV, 89). He speaks of the "Atticism" of Maucroix (ibid., X, 232). 
"Atticism" is a term which is much abused by critics who are likely to misapply it 
(ibid., XI, 520). He defines it thus elsewhere: "L'atticisme, c'est a dire le pur 
langage naturel francais, repos6, coulant de source, et jaiUissant des levres avant 
toute coloration factice," etc. (ibid., XII, 485), and he laments the fact that in his 
own day this great quality was dying out. 

4 Nouveaux lundis, V, 366. He gives a history of the word urbanity and adds 
some items later (ibid., VI, 375). Flechier among others "a 6minemment Purbanite 
qui est le contraire de la rusticite" (Causeries du lundi, XV, 405). 

s Pascal is the "moins asiatique des ecrivains" and the one whom we must read 
as an antidote to this Asiatic style which Rousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre 
introduced (Causeries du lundi, VI, 441). 

6 Ibid., XV, 404. 



PRECEPTS AND "PROCfiDlZS" ioi 

calls "la maniere, abondante, excessive asiatique." 1 It is the style of 
Balzac, the atmosphere from which the later Sainte-Beuve withdrew 
to ever remoter distance. And it is the Attic which he increasingly 
identified as the truly and characteristically French style. 3 

We know that Sainte-Beuve was interested in a book as a definite 
and detachable entity, that his humanistic instincts were quite as strong 
and as operative as his naturalistic convictions, and that they flowered 
in his mind in an intense interest in the aesthetic side of the arts. He 
himself, as we have seen, constantly recurred to the statement that 
criticism must always remain an art, and must therefore, in his logic, 
always stay in the humanistic tradition. 

This is the place then to state very briefly his ideas on literature — 
its purpose, function, and forms, including both genres and style. 
Harper makes a somewhat ill-balanced statement as to Sainte-Beuve when 
he says: "He had comparatively little to say about literature as an art, 
about its forms and laws and its evolution; literature was in his eyes 
an infinitely diverse expression of personality, and personality was the 
substance of which literature was the shadow." 3 This statement would 
be acceptable if we may qualify the implication that he was not inter- 
ested in literature on the side of form. As a matter of fact we fre- 
quently find Sainte-Beuve basing his main judgment of a work on the 
tradition of literary form, or of literary style created and dictated by 
good usage. 

As aesthetician he was very catholic and inclusive in his classifica- 
tion — he seemed willing to rank as literature practically any written 
expression of thought or feeling. He was still more catholic as a critic, 
handling with equally scrupulous care all books that interested him. 
Science, art, poetry, history, travel, eloquence, criticism — all were 
grist to his critical mill. If he attempted to limit more narrowly the 
bounds of literature it was in these two directions: literature is an 
expression de soi, and its invariable aim and function are to give aesthetic 
pleasure. Here, as we have seen him do in other matters, Sainte-Beuve 
shows some confusion of thought, heralding the deep uncertainty of our 
own day concerning the definitions of genre and forms. In the actual 
critical essays he seemed to regard as literary anything that was written, 
yet in his theorizing he had a rather definite formula for literature: 

Revenons aux choses simplement agreables et indifferentes, a ce qui est du 
ressort de la pure litterature. L 'esprit litteraire, dans sa vivacite et sa grace, 
consiste a savoir s'interesser a ce qui plait dans une delicate lecture, a ce qui 

1 Ibid., II, 449. 2 Ibid., VI, 441. 3 Harper, op. cit., p. 74. 



102 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

est d'ailleurs inutile en soi et qui ne sert a rien dans le sens vulgaire ; a, ce qui 
ne passionne pas pour un but prochain et positif ; a, ce qui n'est que l'ornement, 
la fleur, la superfluite immortelle et legere de la societe et de la vie. 1 

As soon, he says, as one attempts to force literature to serve some utili- 
tarian end, "c'est couper les ailes a la fantaisie et au grand art que ne 
releve que de lui-meme." a 

Literature, though as an art it has no avowed purpose and no aim 
other than artistic pleasure, does nevertheless produce a result, the culti- 
vation of the spirit; "voyez-vous, la plus grande gloire des poetes morts 
ou absents consiste en ce que les vivants heureux et presents les lisent 
pour en faire un accompagnement et un pretexte a leurs pensees: le 
piano au fond pendant lequel on cause." 3 And this is not entirely 
inconsistent with the fact that he feels that the function of a whole 
school or type of poetry is that of a promenade buissonniere on a spring 
morning; for the experiencing of ideal pleasures, of genuinely artistic 
satisfaction, is in itself an elevation of the spirit and a refinement of the 
sensibilities. "Ne pas avoir le sentiment des lettres, cela veut dire ne 
pas avoir le sentiment de la vertu, de la gloire, de la grace, de la beaute, 
en un mot de tout ce qu'il y a de veritablement divin sur le terre." 4 
Must we not necessarily infer that if the lack of appreciation of literature 
so dwarfs one's spirit, the possession of that sentiment des lettres forwards 
one in the acquisition of the desirable virtues enumerated? The 
service of literature in the life of a nation, too, he profoundly believes 
in. 5 His faith in the social and spiritual services of literary criticism 
we have studied elsewhere in some detail; and Sainte-Beuve in many 
passages cordially classifies criticism as a type of literature — this though 
he may shift his focus, and change his atmosphere in other passages and 
look coldly upon criticism as a type of philosophy or as some kind of 
purely technical writing. 

His protests, as we have shown elsewhere, 6 against "tendency" in 
literature are not directed against the ideal and spiritual meaning that 
underlies all art, but against the purely utilitarian in art. Polemic 
is peculiarly dangerous, he thinks, essentially treacherous. The doc- 
trinaire artist will inevitably, in the excess of his zeal, under pressure of 

1 Nouveaux lundis, VI, 24. 'Ibid., I, 205. * Cahiers, p. 10. 

4 Ibid., p. 188. He describes the salutary moral and psychological effects of 
love for Moliere in almost extravagant terms: " C'est avoir en soi une garantie contre 
bien des d6fauts, bien des travers et des vices d' esprit," while Corneille, Racine, and 
Boileau each has his special medicinal virtue {Nouveaux lundis, V, 277 ff.). 

s Causeries du lundi, VII, 323. 6 Cf. supra, pp. 64 ff. 



PRECEPTS AND "PROCEDtiS" 



103 



his conviction, allow falsehood to creep in — the serpent which leaves as 
his slimy trail charlatanism and quackery, which, says Sainte-Beuve, 
contaminate all orders of thought: "Oui, mais dans Tordre de la pens6e, 
dans l'art, c'est la gloire et l'eternel honneur que le charlatanisme n'y 
penetre pas, c'est ce qui fait l'inviolabilite de cette noble partie de 
l'homme." 1 

It is rather surprising that he had little to say about the genres of 
literature as genres, and the little he did say is astonishingly unimportant. 
It is probable that his early experience as a romanticist had convinced 
him of the artificiality and unreality of the laws of genre as codified by 
the formalists of his day. He who had forwarded and shared the revolt 
against the pseudo-classics, who had been a co-worker with Hugo, 
De Musset, and Gautier, was not himself to be caught in the machinery 
of the old complex distinctions. And we have to remind ourselves that 
the modern critical psychology of species in literature had not appeared. 

He has more and more definite things to say' about the roman than 
about any of the other genres? He has scattered utterances on various 
kinds of prose and on the forms and types of lyric verse, but none of 
them are of the highest importance, and there are not enough of them 
to enable us to establish a body of definitions or discriminations. 3 As 
Faguet has pointed out, 4 it is astonishing that Sainte-Beuve should 
have taken so little interest in a critical way in the drama. Sainte- 
Beuve himself asserts that the French genius is essentially dramatic, 
and there seems to have been in his nature something un-Gallic that 

1 Cahiers, p. 51. 

3 " Je me garderai bien, pour commencer, de donner ni meme d'avoir par-devers 
moi une thSorie du roman. Le grand avantage du roman est precis£ment d'avoir 
echappe jusqu'ici a toute theorie. ... Grace a cette libert6 d'allure qu'il a eue a toutes 
les epoques, et qu'on lui a concedee en tant que genre sans consequence, le roman a 
prosper^, fleuri, fructine, et il s'est vu capable, presque des sa naissance, de prendre 
toutes les formes, sentimentale, pastorale, poetique, chevaleresque, historique, ironique, 
satirique, allegorique, descriptive, morale, passionnee. La forme philosophique et 
raisonneuse est aussi l'une des siennes, et je ne saurais la proscire. La nouvelle Heloise 
et Delphine sont des branches legitimes du roman. Un peu de precherie n'y messied 
pas, c'est accorde: il ne s'agit que d'y observer le gout, la vraisemblance, la raison, 
d'y entretenir l'interet, de n'y pas introduire l'ennui. En un mot j'admets tous les 
genres en fait de roman, et je ne m'inquiete que de la maniere dont ils sont traites" 
(Nouveaux lundis, V, 25). 

3 On Memoires cf. Causeries du lundi, I, 443, 446; XV, 47. On Lettres, ibid., 
VTII, no. On the Epigramme cf. Nouveaux lundis, VII, 8. On the forms of lyric 
poetry cf. the articles on poetic subjects. 

4 Faguet, Sainte-Beuve, critique dramatique, p. 69. 



104 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

would account for his indifference to the drama. The only considerable 
passage of dramatic criticism in this his later period is the series of essays 
on Le Cid of Corneille; and even here he is more concerned with the play 
as a manifestation of the spirit of its times and as a document in literary 
history than as a play. There occurs, however, some little discussion 
of essential principles of dramatic form, in particular of the unities. 1 

Sainte-Beuve was truly the French critic in his paramount interest 
in matters of style, and his discussions of purely literary technique 
are mainly devoted to it. Many of his judgments of men and books 
take style as their sole basis. His own style was eminently plastic and 
adaptable, and in this respect meets the requirement he set up for a good 
style for the critic, which, he said, should vary with the necessities of his 
work, taking on atmosphere and tone from the material he is handling. 
So Sainte-Beuve 's own sensitive style becomes ancient when handling 
ancient matter; imaginative and metaphorical when the themes are 
poetry; classic or Romantic, realistic or idealistic, austere or full of the 
joy of life by turns; his sense of style, his "taste" was so keen as to 
enable him to detect and to assume at will the peculiar flavor of an 
author. 2 The appreciation of a fine style is, he says, peculiarly a French 
endowment, as is also what may be called a national pride in excellent 
writing. 3 

In Volume I of the Causeries du lundi he gives a brief history of 
French style, asserting that the great classical period was the epoch par 
excellence of fine writing, setting the standard by which we must always 
measure ourselves. Even the uneducated dames de caur of that brilliant 
age could write beautifully, because they possessed the two essential 
qualities of French style, simplicity and nettete. It was Rousseau and 
the romanticists following him who introduced into their work eloquence 
and declamation, marring its purity, destroying its certainty. 4 Sainte- 
Beuve felt that in his own day the art of writing was languishing, if not 
perishing; "flya dans Fouvrage de Barthelemy une qualite a laquelle 
on est trop peu sensible a present, il y a de la composition et de la liaison." 5 
Written style, he says, is nowadays giving place to spoken style, and the 
art of writing is dying out; in this generation anybody thinks he can 

1 Xouveaux lundis, VII, 258, where he discusses the unities; cf. also ibid., p. 285. 

3 Causeries du lundi, Vlil, 210. 

3 Xouveaux lundis, VI, 393. 

« Causeries du lundi, I, 92. s Ibid., VII, 209. 



PRECEPTS AND "PROC£d£S 



105 



write, and all sorts of persons are bursting into print — persons with no 
training who are consequently capable of nothing other than a slipshod 
style. 1 

Sainte-Beuve is the advocate of the golden mean. He complains 
of a style that is merely slipshod, though he recognizes that too formal 
a manner leads to affectation. "II faut ecrire comme on parle, et ne 
pas trop parler comme on ecrit," 2 is his apparently paradoxical counsel. 
It is easier, he says, for a Frenchman to speak well than to write well; 
"de la parole vive au papier il s'est fait bien des nauf rages." 3 He says 
of the spoken or written style: "La parole est une faculte qui, a toutes 
les epoques, et dans un degre eminent, est donnee naturellement a 
quelques-uns; c'est entre la parole parlee et cette meme parole ecrite 
que la plus grande difference a lieu, et qu'il se fait un naufrage de bien 
des pensees." 4 The author's written style should partake of the live- 
liness and freshness of speech, while at the same time it should exhibit 
that harmony, organization, clearness, and nettete that come only from 
training and the taking of pains. One must have done one's rhetoric, 
he says of Delecluze, 

cependant, il y aura, en litterature, une chose bien essentielle qu'on ne lui 
aura pas apprise et qu'il ne saura jamais; c'est l'art d'ecrire. II n'a jamais 
fait de rhetorique ; on s'en apercoit en le lisant. Ne pas avoir fait de rhetorique 
dans le sens ou je l'entends ici, c'est ne pas se douter des difficultes de l'art. 5 

Training and experience must finally equip one for that marshaling 
of ideas into order which constitutes the foundation of good writing, 
for style after all is but the manner of presenting material : 

Assembler, soutenir et mettre en jeu a la fois dans un instant donne le 
plus de rapports, agir en masse et avec concert, c'est la le difficile et le grand art, 
qu'on soit general d'armee, orateur ou ecrivain. II y a des generaux qui ne 
peuvent assembler et manceuvrer plus de dix mille hommes, et des ecrivains 
qui ne peuvent manier qu'une ou tout au plus deux idees a la fois. ... Je con- 
nais ainsi des ecrivains qui, avant d'ecrire, congedient la moitie de leurs idees, et 
qui ne savent les exprimer qu'une a une: — c'est pauvre. 6 

Nevertheless, Sainte-Beuve, lest he should have made too strong a case 
for the disciplined style, warns us against mere virtuosity in writing. 



1 Nouveaux lundis, IX, 63. 

2 Cahiers, p. 121. 

3 Causeries du lundi, XI, 352. 



« Ibid., EX, 385. 

s Nouveaux lundis, III, 82. 

6 Portraits litter aires, III, 547. 



106 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

The author who has acquired a conscious facility must resist the tempta- 
tion to write for the sake of writing: 

T ouj ours le style te dimange. ... Rien de plus juste; ce malheureux gout de 
style et d'art est comme une gale qui s'attache a vous et gate toute votre vie. 
Elle vous empeche d'etre politique. ... Au moment ou vous commencez a 
Petre voila le style qui vous demange; plus de laisser-aller, plus de joie. II vous 
faut rentrer dans votre bouge, polir votre mot, trouver votre rime, vous taper 
le front et vous ronger les ongles. 1 

When one has acquired a taste and a technique like this he must beware 
lest he pass from virtuosity into preciosity — in a word, Sainte-Beuve's 
severest word, into neo-classicism. He especially decried the artificiality 
of laborious elegance: "Pelegance! quand Pelegance n'atteint pas la 
grace ce n'est rien du tout." 2 He quotes from Mme de Girardin, 

qui a fait, dans Napoline, un vers qui la trahit: "Ah! c'est que l'elegance est 
de la poesie." Certes, je ne voudrais pas exclure de la poesie l'elegance, mais 
quand je vois celle-ci mise en premiere ligne, j'ai tou jours peur que la facon, 
le fashion, ne prime la nature, et que l'enveloppe n'emporte le fond. 3 

Sainte-Beuve's advice as to the practical way of avoiding the grievous 
faults of the artificial style is twofold. In the first place the writer should 
embody in his written style the vigor and freshness of his spoken style; 
in the second place he should maintain and conserve his individuality, 
refusing in spite of the severest discipline to become standardized. The 
style of Cousin, he says, admirable as it is in many ways, is lacking in 
this essential feature: "Rien n'y marque Phomme. ... J'aime que le 
style se ressente davantage des qualites originales et piquantes de Pindi- 
vidu, en un mot qu'il sente Vhomme"* Unless his style be, in the words 
of Buffon, "de Phomme meme" the writer falls into abstraction, into 
formless generalities. As a pendant to this advocacy of individuality 
he deplores imitation. "J'aime qu'il en soit de la langue, du style de 
tout grand ecrivain, comme du cheval de tout grand capitaine: que 
nul ne le monte apres lui." 5 The very truest mark of a great writer is 
that he achieves a style which is the indissoluble and inimitable union 
of his manner of thinking and his manner of writing. This is, indeed, 
what makes him a great writer. It is the style of Pascal that is his 

1 Portraits contetnporains, V, 459. 

2 Cahiers, p. 59. * Ibid., XI, 469. 

3 Causeries du lundi, III, 393. s Portraits contetnporains, V, 456. 



PRECEPTS AND "PROCfiDfiS" 



107 



ideal — rapid, direct, clear, brilliant, the perfect vehicle of the keen, 
incisive, powerful thought which it conveys. 1 

Sainte-Beuve practically never fails to discuss the style of the artist 
whom he has under consideration — appraising, condemning, commend- 
ing; and always looming large in the background, implicit or explicit, as 
standard and criterion, stands the style of Pascal and the other great 
classicists. 

1 " Je vais droit au dSfaut capital et radical du talent Sieve" de M. de Bonald. ... 
M. de Bonald nous fait repasser par la fili&re des mots et par la mScanique du language 
de Condillac, ... pour revenir au monde des id6es et au ciel mStaphysique de 
M. Malebranche" (Causeries du lundi, IV, 435). In other words Bonald 's style and 
manner are not his own. 



VII. SAINTE-BEUVE'S PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 

The program of Sainte-Beuve's criticizing, put together in a previous 
section of this thesis, is a synthetic one, the items collected from various 
places wherein he discusses his art. All its items are those that he has 
in one place or another definitely and strongly propounded. Most of 
it, as a matter of fact, he has given in the formula for criticizing in the 
famous Chateaubriand article. 1 

But it cannot be expected that examination of the essays in order 
will show him following this program closely or even making use of all 
its details in any one essay. It is indeed safe to say that there is no essay 
in which he uses the whole program, and certain it is that he does not 
in any essay take up the processes in the beautifully logical order in 
which they are formulated. He does make use of them all, in this 
essay emphasizing one, in that essay another. He even introduces 
processes not provided for in the program, some of them unique, some 
of them too whimsical and personal to be catalogued. He must have 
realized that his critical program was a rationalized, logically con- 
structed edifice rather than a procedure worked out through actual 
trial and error. In the actual essays he proceeded in his approaches, 
expositions, and judgments as an orderly scientific critic, though some- 
times with methods and points of view impossible to standardize or 
even repeat. 

Our work here is to determine from his exact statements whether 
or not he was conscious of a definite method of procedure and whether 
and to what extent he followed the logical plan we have gathered from 
his statement. 

Two investigations are necessary before we can reach this deter- 
mination: We must examine the content of the essays to determine 
those matters that Sainte-Beuve handles most often and emphasizes 
most, and we must examine the structure of all the essays for the presence 
and use of his critical formula. The first investigation will tell us 
within certain limits what kind of a critic Sainte-Beuve was in practice, 
scientific, historical, or aesthetic, and the second will show us whether 
or not, and under what conditions, he found his program workable. 

1 Nouveaux lundis, III, i. 

108 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 



109 



1. 



2. 



In pursuance of the former study all the essays of the Causeries 
and the Nouveaux lundis were examined. For this classification the 
following categories were used : 

Biographical matter 

a) The events of the life of his subject 

b) Analysis and interpretation of character 

Historical matter 

a) Political history, politics, war, diplomacy, social movements 

b) Etudes de mceurs 

Literary matter 

a) Exposition, the expounding of his documents with the unavoidable 
discussion of the ideas and doctrines found in them 

b) Literary history, tracing the development of a genre, recurring appear- 
ance of phenomena, the characteristic evolution of an author, a strain 
of influence 

c) Critical judgment and evaluation, the term "critical" being here used 
as designating opinion and suggestion as to the merits and defects of the 
work he is handling 

d) Polemic matter, argument in which Sainte-Beuve is taking sides on a 
moot question and trying to bring the reader to his point of view 

e) Philosophic matter, including aesthetics, in which he is expounding and 
applying theories concerning art, history, politics, or criticism itself 



It is not necessary to say that the delimitation of these categories 
is not scientifically exact or that the classes indicated by them are neither 
exhaustive nor mutually exclusive; there is much overlapping and inter- 
penetration of the subject-matter. The material offered by the essays 
and the nature of the categories themselves preclude a hard-and-fast 
scientific classification; and the fact that the essays are literary pre- 
cludes their being handled as mere science. But this tentative and sug- 
gestive grouping of the essays does reveal the lines of Sainte-Beuve's 
main interests. 

In the two series there are some six hundred and forty essays. There 
are certain groups which form series, occasionally as many as five on the 
same subject, as witness the five each on Talleyrand, Mme Desbordes- 
Valmore, and Le Marechal de Villars; four on Horace Vernet; and many 
groups of three. There are, roughly speaking, four hundred and thirty 
subjects treated. 

The examination of these six hundred and forty essays yields the 
following summaries : Biographical matter predominates in one hundred 
and ninety, one hundred and thirty-four placing the main emphasis 



no SAINTE-BEUVE S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

of the essay on the events of the subject's life, and fifty-six placing it 
on character analysis and interpretation. This biographical group 
constitutes, as may be seen, 60 per cent of the essays, a rinding that sup- 
ports the statement that Sainte-Beuve gives a major place to biography. 

Historical matter in the two varieties provided for receives the main 
emphasis in seventy-five essays. Of these thirty are concerned with 
political history, forty-five are studies of manners. Bald figures are, 
however, peculiarly deceptive in this class, since Sainte-Beuve was 
constantly introducing into his essays cursory and, as it were, casual 
historical matter of various kinds, so that the number of essays in which 
it holds first place understates his interest in history. We have to 
remind ourselves of the large number in which it holds second place 
and the other large number in which it is in the background of his think- 
ing. In regard to the forty-five essays in which studies of manners 
occupy the foreground, we must bring to mind the fact that Sainte- 
Beuve was deeply and unfailingly human; he had a keen and restless 
curiosity about life and the behavior of human beings in all ages and 
places; he delighted to delve into the past, to find anecdotes, quaint 
usages, forgotten manners. Nothing that served to throw fight or 
interest on the development of mankind or on the growth of the mind 
was trivial to him or outside his province. We find a rich record and a 
sympathetic study of customs, habits, humors, oddities — this is the 
nature of the material to be found in these etudes de mceurs. It occupies 
a major place in forty-five of the essays, holds second place in others, 
and occurs in fragments and scattered passages in many places. Such 
matter is, of course, extremely serviceable in placing a man in his set- 
ting, dans son cadre, a service which Sainte-Beuve delighted to perform 
and which he considered essential. 1 

Literary matter occupies the main place and receives the main 
emphasis in one hundred and fifty of the essays. The reiteration of the 
previous warning seems necessary here; the mere figures are a bit mis- 
leading because whatever other kind of matter he is using Sainte-Beuve 
is always literary in method and style, and in many cases matter is 
handled by way of leading up to a literary judgment or defending such 
a judgment, which, though it be the very core of the essay, may occupy 
a small space. 

The four varieties of literary matter provided for in the scheme 
occur in the following proportions: exposition is conspicuous in sixty 
essays; literary history, in thirty-five; critical discussion, in fifty-five. 

1 See "Aesthetic Criticism," p. 46. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 



in 



To put it in other words, of the hundred and fifty essays in which literary 
matter predominates, 40 per cent is chiefly occupied with expounding 
and interpreting the ideas of the persons under discussion, about 20 per 
cent is given to problems of literary development, and 40 per cent to the 
expression of Sainte-Beuve's own critical views, chiefly estimating the 
actual work or man under discussion. 

As to the remaining varieties of subject-matter, the aesthetic and the 
polemic, only a few essays are devoted to each. Sainte-Beuve is not much 
given to theorizing formally about his art. He is prevailingly empirical, 
content with functioning directly as a critic, saying very little about 
the theoretical or speculative bases of his working principles. Indeed, 
in view of his enormous erudition and the infinite trouble he took to 
prepare himself for the writing of an essay, he is curiously matter of 
fact and practical-minded in all his processes. He has said, as we have 
seen, a great deal about the art and function of the critic and criticism, 
but sifted down it proves to be mainly the expounding and defining of 
actual working principles. And even this body of critical discussion 
looks small in comparison with his great output of writing. Among 
the small number of essays — less than a dozen — in which the aesthetic 
or philosophical-critical matter predominates must be mentioned "De 
la tradition en litterature," 1 the article on Chateaubriand, 3 which con- 
tains most of the items of his critical program, and the article on 
Deschanel's Essai de critique naturelle? 

So far as concerns matter of a polemic kind, only four or five of the 
essays can fairly be assembled under this caption. He says in a well- 
known passage cited elsewhere in this thesis that he has renounced 
polemic criticism. One must, however, recognize this element in the 
essays "sur l'orthographie," 4 "Les lectures publiques du soir," 5 and 
"La question des theatres," 6 since they are distinctly framed for the 
purpose of convincing. 

Besides the groups outlined above we must constitute an omnibus 
class where we may dispose of such matter as the political theorizing 
of "La reforme sociale en France," 7 the exposition of the Saint-Simonian 
theories of social betterment in the essay on Duveyrier. 8 

One of the deductions to be drawn from this classification confirms 
the common judgment given of Sainte-Beuve that he was interested 



1 Causeries du lundi, XV, 356. 

2 Nouveaux lundis, III, 1. 

3 Ibid., IX, 62. 

< Ibid., VIII, 73. 



s Ibid., V, 70. 

6 Causeries du lundi, I, 35. 

7 Nouveaux lundis, IX, 161. 

8 Ibid., X, 237. 



H2 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 



primarily in biography, in life-history and character; in the individual 
rather than in the group, and in the group large or small only for the 
explanation it afforded of its individuals. But to this conclusion we 
must add a pendant not always stated by students of Sainte-Beuve: 
he is interested in whatever embodies and expresses the characteristic 
personality of writers. His was thus pre-eminently a psychological 
rather than a dramatic sympathy. 

The only surprise that the classification might offer is the small 
amount of space or emphasis given in the essays to aesthetics or artistic 
theory. What discussion there is of these matters is largely scattered 
and even desultory. When all is said it is clear that Sainte-Beuve was 
the practical workman in criticism, and that he is fundamentally the 
historian of actual literature, of current human behavior, and of the 
minds of definite men. 

The second investigation we must undertake is designed to answer 
the inquiry, How closely did Sainte-Beuve, in the process of criticiz- 
ing, adhere to the plan, program, or series of rules that he himself laid 
down ? To state it succinctly and colloquially, did he practice what he 
preached ? 

In making this study we will take the critical program already 
formulated and apply it to the essays item by item. Only those occur- 
rences of his use of a specific doctrine which show a conscious, deliberate, 
and emphatic application of it will be quoted or cited; those cases in 
which the item receives casual and incidental attention will be passed 
over with only casual and general notice. For example, Sainte-Beuve 
rarely fails to mention the birthplace of the person whose biography he 
is giving. But in many cases it is a mere bit of historical routine, given 
without elaboration; in a few cases Sainte-Beuve believes that the place 
in which a man is born and passes his childhood had some definite or 
powerful influence on his development. It is instances of the second 
kind that will be quoted or cited. 

The first item to be considered is that of race and racial qualities, 
in Sainte-Beuve's phrase "cette racine obscure et derobee," sometimes 
very difficult to discover. 1 It is clear that by "race" he generally meant 
nationality, for he Speaks of the English race, the French, the Italian, 
even the Breton "race." Indeed it is not in Sainte-Beuve but in Taine 
and Renan that we have our first modern scientific studies of genuine 
racial influence in literature. 

1 See supra, p. 33. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 



113 



Representative illustrations of Sainte-Beuve's use of what he calls 
the author's race are the following: "II me semble que tout se concilie 
chez Duclos, et que les inconsequences elles-memes s'expliquent moyen- 
nant l'humeur et la race. II etait Breton; il devait a cette origine 
bien caracterisee des points fixes de resistance dont il ne se d6partait 
pas." 1 Of Le Sage he says that though he met jealousies and made 
enemies "il tint ferme, et ne se laissa aller a aucune basse complaisance. 
C'est ici que le Breton se retrouve en lui." 2 Lamennais he calls "ce dur 
Breton, avec ses asperites d'origine," 3 and then, too, he treats of the 
manifestation of the Breton strain in Renan: "II appartient a la race 
bre tonne pure, a cette race triste, douce, inflexible ... il a encore de sa 
race premiere certains traits que lui-meme a notes comme les plus 
profonds et les plus durables, la foi, le serieux, l'antipathie pour ce qui 
est vulgaire, le mepris de la legerete." 4 He points out the influence of 
English birth on Hamilton, and adds that "il ne fit que croiser ce 
qu'il y avait de plus fin dans les deux races" 5 (French and English); 
Chesterfield, too, unites in himself these two races: "II unit assez bien 
lui-meme les avantages des deux nations, avec un trait pourtant qui 
est bien de sa race. II avait de l'imagination jusque dans resprit." 6 
Ramond's father was from the south of France and his mother from the 
Palatinate: "Le jeune Ramond participa intellectuellement de cette 
double origine; il montra de bonne heure la vivacite, la promptitude 
brillante d'impressions qui caracterise les races du Midi, et il y mela de 
la sensibilite et quelque chose de l'enthousiasme du Nord." 7 His descrip- 
tion of Beranger is to the point: "Mais Beranger, ne Toublions pas, est 
de la race gauloise, et la race gauloise, meme a ses instants les plus 
poetiques, manque de reserve et de chastete: voyez Voltaire, Moliere, 
La Fontaine, Rabelais et Villon, les aieux." 8 He reiterates this about 
La Fontaine elsewhere, 9 and Colle he calls "le dernier des Gaulois," 
analyzing what he means by this. 10 Mile de Scudery, whose father was 
a Gascon but had moved to Normandy and married there, partook more 
of her Norman than her Provencal blood." In writing of Goethe, "le 
type accompli du genie allemand," 12 he recalls to our minds several times 



1 Causeries du lundi, IX, 220. 

2 Ibid., II, 359. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, I, 35. 
« Ibid., II, 384. 

s Causeries du lundi, I, 95. 
6 Ibid., II, 243. 



7 Ibid., X, 447. 

8 Ibid., II, 292. 

9 Ibid., VII, 532. 

10 Nouveaux lundis, VII, 370. 

11 Causeries du lundi, IV, 122. 

12 Ibid., II, 341. 



114 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

the fact that we are dealing with a German and must make allowances 
for this in our opinions; and of Goethe's friend Bettina Brentano he 
says that she kept many traces of her Italian ancestry: " Restee Italienne 
par son imagination ... elle sentait l'art et la nature comme on ne les 
sent qu'en Italic" 1 

Sainte-Beuve felt that in certain marked ways the regional group, 
the tribe, as it were, of which a man was born, exercised a profound 
influence, declaring, for example, that the soldier Montluc derived his 
prowess from his native Gascony: "Le Gascon Montluc, en propos et 
en action, c'est un heros de Corneille venu un peu plus tot ... il est un 
caractere constant et qui frappe dans les talents comme dans les courages 
de cette genereuse contree." 2 But a better example, because clearer, 
is that of the Abbe Prevost: "Ainsi done, il dut beaucoup ... a sa race 
du bon pays d'Artois, comme il l'appelait." 3 " Cependant on n'est pas du 
midi impunement" is the way in which he explains certain characteristics 
of Seiyes. 4 And Raynouard too was from the south of France: 

Nul homme distingue ne garda plus que Raynouard le cachet primitif 
de sa province, de son endroit [il etait de Brignolles]. II etait avant tout de son 
pays par l'accent ... il en etait par le cceur, par le patriotisme, par les idees ... 
il etait de son pays aussi par la gaiete, par le trait, par le petit mot pour rire. 

Even his erudition he related to "son midi a lui." 5 "N'oublions pas 
... que Mme Du Deffand etait de Bourgogne; elle semble tenir de cette 
verve du terroir, qui inspira tant de piquants no'els aux Piron et aux 
La Monnoye." 6 This province, fertile in wits, gave birth also to Bussy- 
Rabutin, "qui eut beaucoup en lui de cette veine railleuse et mordante, 
de cet esprit de saillies dont on fait honneur a, sa province, et dont on 
retrouve maint temoignage direct chez les Piron, les La Monnoye, les 
Du Deffand"; 7 and Piron, too, "tient de sa province en general" in 
this respect. 8 

In the same vein he writes of Le Sage, emphasizing this time, how- 
ever, more the territorial than the racial aspects of his Breton birth: 

Les plus exactes biographes le font naitre ... en basse Bretagne. Du fond 
de cette province energique et rude, d'ou nous sont venus de grands ecrivains 
... Le Sage nous arriva ... on ne trouverait quelque chose du coin breton 
en lui que dans sa fierte d'ame et son independance de caractere. 9 

1 Causeries du lundi, II, 331. 

*Ibid., XI, 57. 6 Ibid., I, 422. 

3 Ibid., IX, 124. 7 Ibid., Ill, 360. 

< Ibid., V, 201. 8 Nouveaux lundis, VII, 405. 

5 Ibid., pp. 2 ff. 9 Causeries du lundi, II, 354. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 



115 



m 



Volney, born on the border between Anjou and Brittany, partook more 
of the "aprete bretonne" than of the "mollesse angevine." 1 Mme 
Necker's Swiss birth had much to do with her development, 2 as did also 
Rousseau's, 3 while St. Francois de Sales, 4 Guy Patin, 5 and Roederer 6 
partook distinctly of the qualities of their native lands. Camille Jordan, 
Sainte-Beuve claims, was essentially a Lyonnais: 

Ne a Lyon ... il resta toute sa vie Thomme de son pays et de sa ville natale 
... le type originel ... ne s'affaiblit jamais. ... Ce caractere porte avec lui 
un certain fonds de croyances ... qui se maintient au milieu de Teffacement 
ou du dessechement trop general des ames. 7 

At times the very aspect of the countryside in which a man is born 
seems to influence his psychology, as in the case of Saint Lambert, 8 of 
Maurice de Guerin, 9 and pre-eminently of Taine, on whom his native 
Ardennes exercised great power: 

Ces Ardennes, en effet, puissantes et vastes ... ont-ils contribue ... a 
remplir, a meubler de bonne heure rimagination du jeune et grave enfant ? 
Ce qui est certain, c'est qu'il y a dans son talent des masses un peu fortes, 
des suites un peu compactes et continues, et ou l'eclat et la magnificence 
meme n'epargnent pas la fatigue ... on lui voudrait parfois plus d'ouver- 
tures et plus d'eclaircies dans ses riches Ardennes. 10 

Sainte-Beuve places the emphasis of strong and reiterated state- 
ment upon the dictum that the critic shall place the author, the states- 
man, or the philosopher, whoever his chosen subject, in his age, in his 
epoch, and upon occasion should study both the epochs preceding and 
succeeding that to which his subject belongs. In fully three-fourths 
of the essays there is some important consideration of the social and 
historical milieu out of which the person or the work under considera- 
tion has arisen. This is the most consistent and pervasive evidence of 
Sainte-Beuve's scientific-mindedness as a critic. Indeed it is so con- 
stant and pervasive that it is not easy to isolate instances for citation. 
Running through almost every essay is the sense of epoch, of spiritual 
and social environment and background. To take the fewest examples, 
Sainte-Beuve says that Janin was obliged to change his plan and 
method of writing when the Revolution of 1848 declared itself; 11 Huet 



1 Ibid., VII, 390. 

2 Ibid., IV, 243. 

3 Ibid., Ill, 96. 

4 Ibid., VII, 267. 
s Ibid., VIII, 89. 
6 Ibid., p. 327. 



7 Nouveaux lundis, XII, 256. 

8 Causeries du lundi, XI, 122. 

9 Ibid., XV, 12, 15. 

10 Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 71. 

11 Causeries du lundi, II, 108. 



n6 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 



was what he was and saw as he did because of the state of French 
Letters in his day. 1 The same explanations and interpretations he finds 
for Pasquier in the sixteenth century and Octave Feuillet in the 
nineteenth. 2 

The atmosphere and influence which molds men Sainte-Beuve con- 
veys rather by accumulation of detail than by generalized assertion, as 
witness this passage, which is thoroughly typical of his method, on 
Balzac: "II avait quinze ans a la chute de l'Empire; il a done connu et 
senti l'epoque imperiale." He lived also under the Restoration: 

II a senti la Restauration en amant. II commengait a arriver a la 
reputation en meme temps que s'installait le nouveau regime promulgue en 
Juillet 1830 ... ainsi ces trois epoques de physionomie si diverse qui consti- 
tuent le siecle arrive a son milieu, M. de Balzac les a connues et les a vecues 
toutes les trois, et son oeuvre en est jusqu'a un certain point le miroir. 3 

He works in the same strain in various epochs, picturing the society at 
the time of La Bruyere which gave birth to the Caracteres,* and the 
general mind of the later part of the Revolution and early part of the 
nineteenth century, which produced the public discourses of Benjamin 
Constant. 5 One has but to open a volume of the Causeries or the 
Nouveaux lundis to find constant examples of this interest and method. 6 
One of the important items in a man's background is his family, says 
Sainte-Beuve, formulating his maxim thus: "On retrouve a coup sur 
l'homme superieur au moins en partie dans ses parents, dans sa mere 
surtout ... dans ses sceurs aussi, dans ses freres, dans ses enfants 
memes." 7 Before examining whether or no Sainte-Beuve investigated 
this matter, it is necessary to point out that nothing is made here 
of the innumerable cases in which he merely mentions the parentage of 
his subject, naming his father and mother, one or both, as a bit of 
biographical routine. Sainte-Beuve, like all biographers, seldom fails to 
tell in this perfunctory way the origin of the person whom he is studying, 
as, for example, "fille d'un des officiers du Due de Lorraine, et petite 
niece, par sa mere, du fameux Callot," 8 or of Rabelais, "fils d'un cabaretier 
de Chinon"; 9 or of Marivaux, "ne d'un pere financier et dans l'aisance." 10 
Such passages have not been counted or noted in detail. But there are 



1 Causeries du lundi, II, 166. 

3 Ibid., Ill, 250; Nouveaux lundis, V, 3. 

3 Causeries du lundi, II, 444. 

* Nouveaux lundis, I, 126. 

5 Ibid., p. 418. 



6 Cf. also Causeries du lundi, XV, 248. 

7 Nouveaux lundis, III, 18. 

8 Causeries du lundi, II, 209. 

9 Ibid., Ill, 4. 

» Ibid., IX, 343. 



PRA CTICE IN CRITICISM 1 1 7 

cases in which actual influence or significant resemblances between a 
man and the members of his family have been emphasized or elaborated 
by Sainte-Beuve. These have been collected as follows: after speaking 
of the family of Lacordaire: "Je n'ai pas voulu omettre ces premieres 
circonstances; car il n'est pas indifferent, selon moi ... d'etre sorti 
d'une race solide et saine"; 1 the father of Theodore Leclerq was "un 
bon bourgeois parisien" and "la riche bourgeoisie parisienne a, de tout 
temps, produit des esprits fins, des railleurs distingues et libres." 3 
Maurice de Guerin's noble family and Mme Desbordes-Valmore's 
humble one left indelible impressions on these two artists. 3 Of Mira- 
beau he says: "il avait en naissant, apporte plusieurs des traits essentiels 
de la famille paternelle, mais en les combinant avec d'autres qui tenaient 
de sa mere"; 4 and of Horace Verne t he declares that he was a painter by 
inheritance, it was "un talent de race" — by which he means here 
"family" — "de quelque cote qu'on remonte dans ses origines, on ne 
voit que peintres et dessinateurs." 5 Piron also "tient de sa famille en 
particulier. ... Les Piron etaient une souche de chansonniers, de malins 
comperes et de satiriques." 6 Mme de Motteville's good sense came 
from her family: "Je releve tout d'abord ce fonds de sagesse, qui 
semblait appartenir a la race," 7 and Leopold Robert's simplicity and 
democracy can be seen in his family also. 8 The family as a unit is, then, 
genuinely creative in molding the genius. 

In the immediate family it is the mother to whom one looks for 
the most powerful influence; the most notable instance perhaps is 
that of the mother of Littre, the savant. Sainte-Beuve devotes a 
paragraph to telling of her birth and qualities and adds "avec cela 
douee d'une elevation d'ame et d'un sentiment de la justice qu'elle dut 
transmettre a ce fils. ... II tient beaucoup d'elle." 9 Ducis, born of a 
French mother and a Savoyard father, "etait lion par son pere et berger 
par sa mere. 10 The mother of Le President De Brosses " etait femme 
forte ... et faite aussi pour transmettre a son fils le zele des nobles et 
solides traditions."" He goes out of his way to give accounts of their 
mothers' influence on Huet, 12 on Fontenelle, 13 on l'Abbe de Choisy, 14 and 

1 Ibid., I, 223. 8 Ibid., X, 411. 

2 Ibid., Ill, 528. 9 Nouveaux lundis, V, 204. 

3 Ibid., XII, 232; Nouveaux lundis, XII, 186. I0 Causer ies du lundi, VI, 457. 

4 Causeries du lundi, IV, 3. " Ibid., VII, 86. 
s Nouveaux lundis, V, 43. a Ibid., II, 166. 

6 Ibid., VII, 405. v Ibid., Ill, 315. 

? Causeries du lundi, V, 169. I4 Ibid., p. 429. 



Il8 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

on Joseph de Maistre. 1 Finally Sainte-Beuve describes Mirabeau's 
inheritance from his mother in these terms: 

II tenait de sa mere la largeur du visage, les instincts, les appetits prodigues 
et sensuels, mais probablement aussi ce certain fonds gaillard et gaulois, cette 
f aculte de se f amiliariser et de s'humaniser que les Riquetti (his father's family) 
n'avaient pas, et qui deviendra un des moyens de sa puissance. 2 

As the mother's influence may be active in a man, so lack of her influence 
may produce certain traits, as in the case of Volney and of Gibbon, 
" ceux a qui a manque cette sollicitude d'une mere ... sont plus aisement 
que d'autres denues du sentiment de la religion." 3 On the whole we 
may say that, consistently with his maxim concerning the family, it is 
to the mother's influence that Sainte-Beuve uniformly attributes the 
most importance. 

While there is not so frequent consideration of the father's influence 
and the cases are not so specific or detailed, the following instances are 
to be noted. Huet received much from his father, "le talent poetique 
qu'il montra, il dut l'avoir herite de lui." 4 Mirabeau's father impressed 
himself upon his son through his indomitable will, his rigidity, and 
cruelty. 5 Pierre Dupont "par son pere tient a la classe des artisans," 
and this was a distinctive factor in his poetry. 6 Sainte-Beuve tells in 
some detail the life-history of the elder Sainte-Simon, pointing out those 
things which his son must have inherited or which must otherwise have 
passed from his father into his consciousness and character: "On 
decouvre meme dans le pere de Saint-Simon une qualite dont ne sera 
pas prive son fils, une sorte d'humeur qui, au besoin, devient de l'aigreur." 7 
The characterization of the father of Alexis Piron as the literary as well 
as the natural parent of his son must also be instanced here. Sainte- 
Beuve felt that he himself had inherited his literary bent and had derived 
his literary talent from his father, 8 and reference must be made again 
to the article on Littre in which there is a fairly detailed history of 
Littre pere, with special bearing upon his spiritual relationship to his 
son. 9 Sainte-Beuve quotes Ducis as saying of the elder Ducis: "C'est 
lui qui, par son sang et ses examples, a transmis a mon ame ses principaux 
traits et ses mattresses formes." 10 P. L. Courier's father's quarrel with a 

1 Causeries du lundi, IV, 194. 6 Ibid., p. 69. 
'Ibid., IV, 3. » Ibid., XV, 427. 

3 Ibid., VIII, 436. 8 Cahiers, p. 56. 

. 4 Ibid., II, 167. 9 Nouveaux lundis, V, 201. 

s Ibid., IV, 2. I0 Causeries du lundi, VI, 457. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 



119 



grand seigneur was inherited by his son and became a main tenet in his 
political creed. 1 One of the most extended of the studies of fathers is 

that of Mme Dacier's parent, an erudite but not pedantic man, who 

transmitted much of his inspiration and not a little of his knowledge to 

his distinguished daughter: 

Fille d'un savant et d'un erudit, [elle] ne faisait, en s'adonnant, comme 
elle fit, a l'antiquite, qu'obeir a l'esprit de famille et ceder a une sorte 
d'h6r£dite domestique. II faut lui passer d'etre erudite comme a la fille de 
Pythagore d'avoir ete philosophe, comme a la fille de l'orateur Hortensius 
d'avoir ete eloquente, comme a la fille du grand jurisconsulte Accurse d'avoir 
excelle dans le droit. 2 

The critic may find a study of the subject's brothers and sisters 
very fruitful, for in them, says Sainte-Beuve, the peculiarities of the great 
man may often be seen "plus a nu et a l'etat simple." 3 Sainte-Beuve 
himself gives us striking examples of this principle: the sisters of 
Chateaubriand (who share the essential characteristics of their great 
brother unmixed with many elements added by his more complex 
experience); the sisters of Lamartine; Mme de Surville, Balzac's sister; 
and Julie, sister of Beaumarchais. This Julie possessed the spirit of 
Gallic gaiety which is so marked in her dramatist brother. 4 Diderot's 
sister also exhibited many traits in common with her brother: 

II avait une soeur d'un caractere original, d'un coeur excellent, brave fille 
qui ne se maria point pour mieux servir son pere, "vive, agissante, gaie, 
decidee, prompte a s'offenser, lente a revenir, sans souci ni sur le present ni 
sur l'avenir, ... libre dans ses actions, plus libre encore dans ses propos: une 
espece de Diogene femelle." On entrevoit en quoi Diderot tenait d'elle, et en 
quoi il en differait: elle etait la branche restee rude et sauvageonne, lui le 
rameau greffe, cultive, adouci, epanoui. 5 

M. Coulmann had a beautiful and accomplished sister, evidently of the 
same stock as himself, 6 and Ernest Renan's sister Henriette was like a 
second mother to him and shared in many of his qualities. 7 Perhaps 
the best case of all is that of the De Guerins, Maurice and Eugenie, where 
the latter actually shared her brother's genius and exercised a genuine 
and traceable spiritual and intellectual influence upon him. 8 

There are perhaps not so many cases in which Sainte-Beuve finds 
light thrown upon a genius by the study of a brother. The first and 

1 Ibid. , p. 323. s Ibid., Ill, 294. 

2 Ibid., IX, 477. 6 Nouveaux lundis, IX, 137. 
J Cf. "Scientific Criticism," p. 36. 7 Ibid., II, 385. 

4 Causeries du lundi, VI, 256. 8 Causeries du lundi, XII, 235 ff. 



120 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

classic instance is, however, that of Boileau, in which Sainte-Beuve 
offers the two brothers of "the lawgiver of Parnassus" as examples 
and proof of his theory: 1 "La nature avait combine en Despreaux les 
traits de l'un et de l'autre" (of his two brothers), but nature has added 
to Boileau himself the element of genius. This idea interested Sainte- 
Beuve so much that he develops it in another passage at some length. 2 
He studies first Gilles Boileau, avocat et rimeur, who lacked only solidity 
and taste to be like his great brother: then he studies Jacques Boileau, 
" dit l'Abbe Boileau, ... qui par ses calembours et ses gaietes, me fait assez 
l'effet d'un Despreaux en facetie et en belle humeur." He sums up: 
" II me semble que la nature ... essayait deja un premier crayon de Nicolas 
quand elle crea Gilles ... puis elle fit Jacques ... Gilles est Vebauche, 
Jacques est la charge, Nicolas est le portrait."* He draws an outline 
portrait of Diderot's brother, pointing out what he has in common with 
the philosopher; 4 he describes Georges de Scudery in his essay on Mile 
de Scudery; 5 the brother of Mezeray is studied to show certain peculiari- 
ties of the more famous man and to illuminate certain traits of his 
character. 6 The anecdote he tells about Piron and his brothers being 
tried out by their father is diverting and illuminating; 7 but he treats 
in a more serious vein the three Perrault brothers, the doctor, the 
architect, and the writer, all men of genius. 8 On the whole he seems to 
have found brothers important as illustrations and illuminations rather 
than as influences. 

As an example of studying the children of the person under discus- 
sion Saint-Beuve makes much of the case of Mme de Sevigne and her 
children, son and daughter; she "semblait d'etre dedoublee dans ses 
deux enfants: le Chevalier, leger, etourdi, ayant la grace, et Mme de 
Grignan, intelligente mais un peu froide, ayant pris pour elle la raison." 9 
He briefly adduces another in the case of the Comtesse de Fontanes, 
and her sister — " chanoinesse, fille du poete qui m'a aide a mieux com- 
prendre et a me mieux representer le poete leur pere." 10 Mme de Stael 
furnishes an illuminating contrast to her mother, Mme Necker," while 
Mme Girardin and the Countess O'Donnell aid in explaining their mother, 
Mme Sophie Gay. 12 More striking and more detailed than any of these 

1 Nouveaux lundis, III, 20. 7 Nouveaux lundis, VTI, 406. 

2 Causeries du lundi, VI, 496. 8 Causeries du lundi, V, 257. 

3 Ibid., p. 498. 9 Nouveaux lundis, III, 20. 
« Ibid., Ill, 294. I0 Ibid., p. 21. 

5 Ibid., IV, 121. u Causeries du lundi, TV, 257. 

6 Ibid., VIII, 197. " Ibid., VI, 64. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 121 

is his study of the personality of Mme Desbordes-Valmore in that of 
her daughters Inez and Ondine : 

Ondine etait poetique aussi et meme poete; elle tenait de sa mere le don 
du chant. ... Cette charmante Ondine avait des points de ressemblance ... 
avec sa mere. ... A la difference de sa mere qui se prodiguait a tous ... elle 
sentait le besoin de se recueillir, de se reserver; ... Ondine etudiait beaucoup. 1 

Then follows a quite detailed statement of the literary talents and 
acquirements of the charming Ondine. 

There is no instance in which Sainte-Beuve makes a study of unsuc- 
cessful or merely negative kindred by way of throwing light on his 
important personage. The psychology of his day attached no impor- 
tance to this kind of evidence, and we could scarcely expect him to have 
appreciated its value. 

Summarizing, we conclude that it is evident from the number and 
importance of the instances assembled that Sainte-Beuve did have the 
principle of the study of a man's kindred always in his consciousness, and 
he found that its application constantly yielded him adequate reward. 

Next in natural order is a discussion of Sainte-Beuve's dictum that 
it is important for the critic to study the childhood, youth, and education 
of his subject. It is easy to dispose of this in its most general aspect, 
for never did Sainte-Beuve fail, when the scope and scheme of his essay 
permitted it, to give attention, sometimes scrupulous attention, to the 
educational experience of his subject. It is with intention that the 
phrase "when the scope and scheme of his essay permitted it" is used, 
for certain essays are concerned with the review of a single book, certain 
others deal with an epoch or a movement in which human figures are 
minimized. In such essays there is no invitation to consider in any 
detail a separate man's education. But in those papers in which the 
critic presents a man's life he invariably makes much of his youth and 
education, both the more formal training which he derived from 
books, masters, and schools and the informal education that came to 
him from his physical and social environment. A few typical and 
significant instances follow. His study of Florian's youth points out 
those influences which helped to form the pretty talent of the fabulist: 
he was brought up and educated in an intellectual atmosphere of wit, 
in a social atmosphere of gentility, among people of gentle manners; he 
was petted and spoiled and praised, and his dwelling in the Alps developed 
in him "un sentiment tout nouveau, plein de fraicheur, l'amour de la 

1 Nouveaux lundis, XII, 168. 



122 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

nature." 1 In the case of De Maistre, Sainte-Beuve says of his education 
that "il avait ete eleve selon l'esprit de la severite antique, et il en garda 
toujours le cachet dans ses mceurs et dans son caractere," and then pro- 
ceeds to show how this "premiere education pure, etroite et forte" 
made De Maistre what he was, "comme ces chenes qui prennent pied 
dans une terre un peu apre et qui s'enracinent plus fermement entre les 
rochers." 2 A noted instance of his studies of education may be found 
in the Taine article. Take two of the details of this study: first, the 
early environment of Taine's childhood, in the Ardennes, educated by 
his father and uncle, men of sterling worth and character; second, 
his experience in the Ecole Normale, which he entered in 1810, and in 
which he spent three years. In this school in Taine's day the students 
did most of the instructing, teaching one another in free debate, only 
guided by the mattres de conference. Sainte-Beuve traces in much detail 
the probable result on the young minds and the actual result on Taine : 

Les avantages d'une telle palestre savante ... sont au dela de ce qu'on 
peut dire ... et Ton sait quelle forte et brillante elite est sortie de cette educa- 
tion feconde, orageuse, toute francaise. Nul, en s'emancipant, n'y est reste 
plus fidele que M. Taine et ne fait plus d'honneur a la severite de ses origines. 3 

In his study of Cowper, Sainte-Beuve finds much explanatory material 
in the childhood and earliest education of the poet. Cowper, deprived 
almost in infancy of the mother who was so well equipped to train the 
sensitive, imaginative child, fell into the hands of rigorous teachers. 
His earliest religious instruction planted ineradicably in his consciousness 
the terrifying images and the paralyzing doctrines of a thoroughgoing 
Calvinistic theology. His experience in school subjected him to the 
dreads and terrors of a cruelty exercised by severe masters and brutal 
older boys. All these experiences co-operated with his naturally shrink- 
ing and sensitive temperament to render him the victim, even in his 
dreams, of nameless and ungovernable fears. Twice he was precipitated 
into insanity by sheer fright, sheer dread of appearing in public, and all 
his life he had recurring spells of melancholia, projecting over his life 
the dim shadows of his childhood's experiences. This interested Sainte- 
Beuve immensely. He translated in full Cowper's touching poem on 
his mother's picture, and he draws in full detail the facts of Cowper's 
childhood. 4 Though we know now that Cowper's madness was tempera- 

1 Causeries du lundi, III, 232. 2 Ibid., IV, 193. 3 Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 74. 

4 Causeries du lundi, XI, 141. Compare Sainte-Beuve's treatment with that of 
Thomas Wright, The Life of William Cowper (1892), pp. 59, 113, 205, 310, 450. He 
shows that Cowper's melancholia was temperamental, and that his early experiences 
only colored it. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 



123 



mental and his experiences rather the occasion than the causes of his 
insanity, we still justify Sainte-Beuve's immense interest in his case. 
Two more cases may be cited with profit, though the list could be pro- 
longed; that of Rollin, who "etait du Pays latin" and to understand 
whom "il faut remonter a cette vie anterieure durant laquelle il s'etait 
forme," the university life; 1 and the second instance, that of Maurice 
de Guerin, in whom Sainte-Beuve studies the epoque nour rider e of his 
talent, his stay in Brittany. 2 We may say then that Sainte-Beuve in 
all those essays which took the biographical form gave special considera- 
tion to the facts of childhood, education, and youth, in certain striking 
instances amplifying the matter, and in a few cases, as with Taine and 
Cowper, following in a penetrating study the effects of early experience 
into the later life and work of his subject. 

Sainte-Beuve reckons as important in the complete understanding of 
a man the knowledge of "le premier groupe d'amis et de contemporains " 
with whom he was associated. In a few important cases he himself 
places the man in his group of contemporaries. He gives as examples 
the cases of Boileau, La Fontaine, and Moliere; of Chateaubriand, 
Fontanes, and Joubert; the reunion at Gottingen of Burger, Voss, 
Holty, and Stolberg; the critical circle of Jeffrey in Edinburgh; the 
society to which Thomas Moore belonged in Dublin 3 — these cases he 
cites to test his theory. When it comes to his own practice, in many 
cases he sets the writer firmly in his group, as for example the etcher 
Gavarni: 

Lui aussi, il etait de ce groupe d'artistes chercheurs, voues a la produc- 
tion feconde, a la renovation de Tart dans tous les genres, et dont la naissance, 
remontant aux premieres annees du siecle, a ete comme proclamee a. son de 
trompe dans ce vers celebre: "Le siecle avait deux ans." ... Variez le chiffre 
... et vous aurez, en sept ou huit ans, toute la couvee reunie, tout le groupe. 4 

Another example is that of Maurice de Guerin: "Ne le 5 aout 18 10 il 
appartenait a, cette seconde generation du siecle lequel n'avait plus deux 
ou trois ans, mais bien dix ou onze lorsqu'il produisait cette volee nouvelle 
des Musset, des Montalambert, des Guerin; je joins expres ces noms." 5 
A little later in the century Theophile Gautier and the Jeunes France 
were occupied a epater le bourgeois when in 1833 he, with Camille Rogier, 
Gerard de Nerval, Arsene Houssaye, Bouchardy, Celestin Nanteuil, 
Jean Duseigneur, Petrus Borel, Theophile Dondey (called O'Neddy), 

1 Causeries du lundi, VI, 262. 

2 Ibid., XV, 17. 4 iud., VI, 143. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, III, 21. s Causeries du lundi, XV, 3. 



124 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

and Auguste Maquet, used to gather every evening in the impasse du 
Doyenne. 1 The group with which Ampere was connected in his youth — 
Sautelet, Frank Carre, Jules Bastide, Albert Stapfer — all read Obermann 
and all suffered from his spiritual malady. 2 Taine's contemporaries 
at the Ecole Normale were, among others, Edmond About, Prevost- 
Paradol, Weiss, sharing a common interest and a common vocation. 3 
At the time of Duclos the literary world was divided between the two 
great cafes, Procope and Gradot. Duclos patronized the former with 
Boindin, l'Abbe Terrasson, Freret, and Piron. 4 Another instance of 
Sainte-Beuve's studying le premier milieu is in the case of Parny, who 
came to Paris in 1770 and there joined 

une petite coterie de jeunes gens ... qui soupaient, aimaient, faisaient des 
vers, et ne prenaient la vie a son debut que comme une legere et riante orgie 
... mais le propre de cette aimable societe ... c'est que la distinction, l'elegance, 
le gout de l'esprit surnageaient toujours jusque dans le vin et les plaisirs. 5 

Joubert in his youth was a member of a group "ce qu'il fit en ces annees 
de jeunesse peut se resumer en ce seul mot. II causa avec les gens 
de lettres en renom; il connut Marmontel, La Harpe, D'Alembert: il 
connut surtout Diderot ... l'influence de ce dernier sur lui fut grande." 6 
It is to be noted that in the former cases Sainte-Beuve mentions the 
volee of kindred spirits, the common children of an epoch; while in the 
case of Joubert the names he mentions are of those friends who exercised 
a formative influence on him. He says furthermore of these friends 
of Joubert that "ils se sentaient nes pour une ceuvre commune." 7 

It is desirable to study a writer, says Sainte-Beuve, at his debut, 
at the moment of his first success, when he has declared himself, but 
before he has acquired any mannerisms. This is on the whole the item in 
his program that Sainte-Beuve most frequently uses, since he holds it 
important to study a man's first work, analyzing and estimating it at the 
moment of his entry into the lists. Especially significant are his studies 
of the first appearance of Montalambert, 8 of Mme Recamier, 9 of Adrienne 
Lecouvreur, 10 of Lacordaire, 11 of Alfred de Musset," of Mazarin, 13 of 
Leclerq. 14 Indeed, in a large group of biographical essays taken at random 

1 Nouveaux lundis, VI, 277. 8 Ibid., p. 81. 

3 Ibid., XIII, 192. 9 Ibid., p. 127. 

3 Ibid., VIII, 72. I0 Ibid., p. 204. 

4 Causeries du lundi, IX, 208. " Ibid., p. 226. 
s Ibid., XV, 286. " Ibid., p. 297. 
6 Ibid., I, 161. ^ Ibid., IL, 250. 
» Ibid. I4 Ibid., HI, 546. 



PIL\CTICE IN CRITICISM 



125 



from the two series it was found that nearly all gave attention to the 
literary debut of the subject, many of them emphasizing it. Among those 
that emphasize the author's first success and then trace its influence in his 
later life notable ones are the essays on Parny, 1 on Pariset, 2 on Alfred de 
Yigny (in this case very carefully); 3 he makes much of Taine's work on 
La Fontaine, saying that it forestalls most that was best in his later 
work. 4 Perhaps the best example of his use of this principle is his 
study of the youth of Moreau before he became spoiled and pessimistic 
by contact with the world: 5 "II y eut en ces annees un Hegesippe 
Moreau primitif, pur, naturel, adolescent, non irrite, point irreligieux, 
dans toute la fleur de sensibilite et de bonte, anime de tous les instincts 
genereux, et non encore atteint des maladies du siecle." 6 In the case 
of Magnin, Sainte-Beuve reiterates his principle: " Je vise toujours ... a 
juger les ecrivains d'apres leur force initiale et en les debarrassant de 
ce qu'ils ont de surajoute ou d'acquis," and then goes into a long descrip- 
tion of the youthful qualities of the famous editor of the Globe. 7 One 
more striking example cannot be passed over, that of the youth of 
Corneille and his first great success: "Quant a Corneille, il n'y a qu'une 
maniere de le bien apprecier, c'est de le voir a son moment, a son debut. 
... Reportons nous a l'heure unique du Cid et a ce qu'elle inaugura. 
C'est le point de vue veritable d'ou il convient d'envisager Corneille ,, ; 8 
and he devotes four essays to the study of this sublime work. 

We might almost predict, knowing Sainte-Beuve's balanced and 
logical mind, that he would say next that we should know a man's mind 
at the close of his working life, at the moment "ou il se gate, ou il se 
corrompt, ou il dechoit, ou il devie," 9 at the moment of his professional 
and artistic dissolution. He describes Mme du Defland, full of humor 
and gaiety, "telle elle etait a 1'age ou expirent les derniers rayons de la 
jeunesse," 10 but she fought against oncoming old age. Mme Recamier, 
on the contrary, he finds, did not struggle, but accepted her fate grace- 
fully, "quand [elle] vit s'avancer l'heure ou la beaute baisse et palit 
elle fit ce que bien peu de femmes savent faire; elle ne lutta point; elle 
accepta avec gout les premieres marques du temps," 11 and Sainte-Beuve 
praises her highly for this proof and exhibition of her philosophy and good 

1 Ibid., XV, 286. 

2 Ibid., I, 401, 411. i Nouveaux lundis, V, 446. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, VI, 403. 8 Ibid., VII, 220. 
« Ibid., VIII, 9 jMd, } ni, 36. 

5 Causer ies du lundi, IV, 53. 10 Causer ies du lundi, I, 418. 

6 Ibid. " Ibid., p. 132. 



126 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

taste. The fabulist Florian allowed himself to exaggerate some of his 
qualities in his old age. 1 Mile de Scudery and Theodore Leclerq are 
taken up at this interesting moment of their careers also. 2 In no case 
are the inferences as clear and instructive as the program itself would 
lead one to expect, and it seems that Sainte-Beuve scarcely made the 
most of his opportunity in respect to this aspect of his criticism. He 
seems never to have been as much interested in the investigation of the 
qualities exhibited in a man's latest work as in those of his earliest. 

The next step in Sainte-Beuve's ritual of criticism carries us into a 
man's private and intimate life. Here he says that there are certain 
questions we must ask, the answers to which throw essential light 
on the nature and quality of a man's character. 3 The first of these 
questions is, "Que pensait-il de la religion?" Unless the occasion 
demanded, as in the treatment of a religious philosopher or that of an 
abbe or a preacher, Sainte-Beuve did not often press or answer this 
question. He throws in a sentence or two, such as this on Barnave: 
" Ses parents professaient la religion reformee, mais il ne parait y avoir 
rien puise, en aucun temps, qu'une certaine habitude reflechie et grave." 4 
The Abbe Galiani he describes as essentially the religious philosopher 
of the eighteenth century. 5 The case, however, of Cowper remains the 
most instructive because his fatalistic Calvinism colored his whole life 
and work. 6 It is scarcely necessary to cite the instances of ^Pascal, 
Flechier, Bourdaloue, Francois de Sales, Fenelon, Bossuet, Rousseau, 
and the philosophers of the nineteenth century, Saint-Simon, Lacordaire, 
Montalambert and the rest, in which the subject necessitates or suggests 
the treatment of religion. However, aside from those mentioned; 
scarcely any are of first-rate importance or are worked out in detail. He 
more often mentions the religion of the women he criticizes than that 
of the men. 

The second question Sainte-Beuve would ask is, " Comment etait ... 
il affecte du spectacle de la nature ?" He answers this question in the 
case of Maurice de Guerin, saying that the poet identified himself 
with nature and felt himself at one with her: " Tous les accidents 
naturels qui passent, une pluie d'avril, une bourrasque de mars, une 
tendre et capricieuse nuaison de mai, tout lui parle, tout le saisit et 
l'enleve; il a beau s'arreter en de courts instants." 7 Mme de Motteville 

1 Causeries du lundi, III, 247. 

a Ibid., IV, 139; III, 547- 5 IbM; P- 429- 

3 Cf. supra, p. 38. 6 Ibid., XI, 146. 

4 Causeries du lundi, II, 24. 7 Ibid., XV, 11. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 



127 



"avait puise dans sa belle Normandie l'amour de la campagne et de 
la nature, mais elle n'en savait pas jouir en courant"; 1 Volney was given 
to philosophizing in the manner of the eighteenth-century philosophers 
in the presence of Alpine peaks; 2 Cowper was a lover of the countryside, 
amant de la nature, knowing each and every one of her aspects and moods; 3 
even in Flechier "on retrouve, sous l'expression artificielle, un certain 
gout et un sentiment fleuri de la nature." 4 One need but touch on what 
he says of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre 5 and Rousseau 6 in respect to their 
appreciation of natural beauty — any critic writing of them would be 
obliged to discuss so salient a characteristic; but of peculiar interest is 
the passage on Chapelle and Bachaumont wherein he practically sums 
up the attitude of the seventeenth century toward nature and country 
things, contrasting it with that of the ancients. Their travels through 
the country were less voyages of discovery than " travestiments et 
parodies de la nature." 7 Only La Fontaine is at home in the country, 
the first author before Rousseau with a genuine sentiment of nature. 8 
The classical attitude is aptly summed up in Malherbe: "II a tres peu 
d'images empruntees directement a la nature; c'est un citadin, un homme 
de cabinet." 9 

The third intimate question for Sainte-Beuve is, "Comment se 
comportait ... il sur l'article des femmes?" Sainte-Beuve esteemed 
this an important question, the answer to which revealed more of the 
man's personality than either of the preceding philosophic queries. 
It chimed in with his practical bent, and then, besides, it expressed some- 
thing very influential in his thinking; he had what amounted to an 
obsession on some aspects of the sex question. His subconscious, and, 
for the matter of that, his superconscious, opinion was that men are 
loose when they are not licentious in matters of sex, and women but 
little better. As a matter of course he discusses in a man's life-history 
his loves proper and those illicit, and when he comes upon a man who 
has had no illicit love affairs of the kind that he was most interested in 
he remarks upon the fact with disappointed astonishment. Such a case 
is that of Joubert, whose love for Mme de Beaumont was of the kind and 
degree known as Platonic, but which Sainte-Beuve regarded as most 

1 Ibid., V, 180. a Ibid., VII, 400. 3 Ibid., XI, 179. < Ibid., XV, 403. 

5 Ibid., VI, 416; Portraits litteraires, II, in. 

1 

6 Causeries du lundi, VIII, 417; I, 368. 7 Ibid., XI, 46-47. 
*Ibid., I, 368, 461; HI, 89; XI, 48. 

9 Nouveaux lundis, XIII, 413. 



128 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

potent in its influence upon the character of Joubert. 1 A similar case 
was that of Vauvenargues, who was constantly irritated by the refusal 
of women to remain on a plane of friendship: "Les femmes ne peuvent 
comprendre, dit-il, qu'il y ait des hommes desinteresses a leur egard." a 
Nor did Saint-Simon, young-old man that he was, ever enjoy feminine 
society. 3 These are the kind of men that surprised and baffled Sainte- 
Beuve; most of those whom he discussed were influenced by women — 
some of them by many women; the currents of the lives of many of 
them had been altered by their experiences in love. In half the biographi- 
cal essays these relations of men and women are studied; there is the 
essay on Chaulieu who had several mistresses, 4 each of whom was 
influential, and those on the various kings of France, Louis XIV, 5 
Francois I, and Henri IV. 6 The instance of Roederer is interesting, the 
feminine influence here being of a different sort: 

Les femmes jouerent toujours un grand role dans la pensee de Roederer; 
il les aimait ... pour leur esprit, pour leur conversation, pour le charme qu'elles 
mettaient dans la societe, et pour la part de culture qu'elles apporterent dans 
le formation de la langue. 7 

Retz "etait extremement libertin," 8 Rivarol married but separated from 
his wife, took with him in his travels a certain "Manette, qui joue un 
certain role dans sa vie intime"; Sainte-Beuve says he speaks of this 
Manette to show "comment Rivarol n'avait point dans ses mceurs 
toute la gravite qui convient a ceux qui defendent si hautement les 
principes primordiaux de la societe," etc. 9 He follows with interest 
the marital difficulties of La Harpe 10 and the amorous intrigues of 
Patru." The history of H6gesippe Moreau was different; he had had 
a first love, "une sceur," as he called her, who retained his image pure 
and clean in her heart, and remained always to him a reminder of his 
old and better self, though she could not stay long with him to prevent 
his becoming embittered with life. He needed a woman's influence: 

II lui fallait, comme a tous les poetes doux et faibles, sauvages et timides, 
tendres et reconnaissants, il lui aurait fallu une femme, une sceur, une mere, 
qui melee et conf undue avec l'amante, l'eut dispense de tout, hormis de chanter, 
d'aimer et de rever." 

1 Causeries du lundi, I, 163. Joubert's supposed Puritanism has recently been 
disproved by A. Beaunier. 

2 Ibid., Ill, 139. 6 Ibid., VII, 436; VIII, 400. 

3 Ibid., XV, 430. 7 Ibid., VIII, 387- I0 Ibid., p. 107. 
« Ibid., I, 466. 8 Ibid., V, 43. " Ibid., p. 279. 

s Ibid., Ill, 451 ff. » jud., p. 77. Ia Ibid., IV, 54, 61. 



PILiCTICE IN CRITICISM 



129 



Another of the questions the answer to which Sainte-Beuve con- 
siders revelatory of character and experience is, "Comment se com- 
portait-il sur l'article de l'argent? £tait-il riche ? £tait-il pauvre?" 
But he himself discussed this matter in very few cases; there is a matter 
of only twenty-five essays in which he handles it at all. In the I 'alley- 
rand he says: 

L'argent tint de tout temps la plus grande place dans les preoccupations 
de M. de Talleyrand. Et puisque j'y suis, je ne me refuserai pas de couler a fond 
cet article de cupidite honteuse dont le personnage politique en lui a tant 
souffert, et s'est trouve si atteint, si gate au cceur et veritablement avili. 1 

Then follows a study of this passion with anecdotes to illustrate the 
points. He describes the ruses to which need of money may drive an 
artist: "L'argent tourmentait beaucoup Bernis," who was driven to 
many subterfuges to obtain the money he needed for his distinguished 
social duties. 2 Malherbe was a cautious bourgeois in money matters, 3 
and of Raynouard "on disait qu'il etait tres parcimonieux," 4 but he 
was very liberal to his own family. More than once he notes that lack 
of money produced certain traits of character and conditioned experi- 
ence, as in the case, once more, of Moreau, who was embittered by 
poverty: "Moreau ressentait vivement les tortures secretes de cette 
pauvrete que La Bruyere a si bien peinte, et qui rend l'homme honteux, 
de peur d'etre ridicule." 5 

Sainte-Beuve would have the critic discover and present the personal 
appearance, the physical presence, of his subject, with his state of health, 
his daily regime, and he himself takes pains to do this for his own sub- 
jects, especially in those cases where there was something unusual or 
anything that was likely to react upon the mental life. For example, 
the Abbe Galiani was not more than four feet and a half in height, with 
"un petit corps tres bien taille et tres joli, ce n'etait qu'esprit, grace, 
saillie et sel pur," and at the same time so wise and so learned as to merit 
the name of Harlequin-Plato; 6 Mirabeau "etait d'une atroce laideur," 
pock-marked and broad-faced, but with beautiful eyes and an immense 
and abounding physical force; 7 Benjamin Constant "etait un beau 
grand jeune homme, d'un blond hardi, muscadin, a Fair candide," etc.; 8 
the feminine prettiness of the Abbe de Choisy contributed largely to 



1 Nouveaux lundis, XII, 54. 
3 Causeries du lundi, VIII, 17. 

3 Xouveaux lundis, XIII, 394. 

4 Causeries du lundi, V, 21. 



s Ibid., IV, 57- 

6 Ibid., II, 421. 

7 Ibid., IV, 4. 

8 Nauveaux lutidis, I, 415. 



130 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

making him effeminate; 1 he discusses the personal appearance of Retz, 2 
Le Brun-Pindar, 3 Stendhal, 4 Saint-Martin, 5 not to mention others, for 
indeed he rarely neglects this point. 

At times the bad health of the author reacts upon his work, as 
in the case of Moreau, whose sickness and physical misery left him des 
douloureux souvenirs, reflected in his verse. 6 This had something to 
do with Pope's poetry also, 7 with the social and religious philosophy of 
Saint-Martin. 8 It is needless to cite more instances, as they are to be 
found in almost all the biographical essays. 

Sainte-Beuve very often has something to tell his readers concerning 
the habits, the personal regimen, of his subject, his maniere journaliere de 
vivre. He esteemed such matters very illuminating and is fond of the 
anecdote that records details of habit and personal peculiarities. 9 Most 
of the critics of Sainte-Beuve have noted and emphasized this. He 
notes, for example, that Michaud never cleaned his nails: "II les avait 
fort noires les ongles"; 10 he tells of Magnin that he used to put his grand- 
mother to bed at a certain hour every night. He tells anecdotes of 
Chateaubriand that would leave his admirer no shred of illusion. 11 
Worth quoting is this, "qu'on me permette a ce propos une remarque 
sur le regime et la diete de Bernis; ce regime n'etait pas ce qu'on pourrait 
croire." Though he had a very good cook and fed his guests very well, 
he himself "ne mangeait que des petits plats de legumes." 12 La Harpe's 
gourmandise is described, 13 and also what Mme Mere du Regent liked to 
eat, sausages and sauerkraut, as it happened, 14 and Talleyrand's regimen 
is given in detail. 15 An interesting instance is that of the Countess of 
Albany. 16 Examples of this nature can be enumerated almost without 
end, but it is not worth while merely to multiply them when it is clear 
that Sainte-Beuve fulfilled his own requirements in respect to showing 
the manner of the daily life of his subject. 17 His, indeed, was a gossip- 
ing, human sort of a mind. He delighted in these realistic anecdotes, 

1 Causeries du lundi, III, 428. s Ibid., X, 244. 

2 Ibid., V, 43. 6 I^d., IV, 59. 

3 Ibid., p. 145. 7 Nouveaux lundis, VIII, 109. 

4 Ibid., IX, 341. 8 Causeries du lundi, X, 244. 
9 Babbitt, Masters of Modern French Criticism, p. 182. 

10 Causeries du lundi, XI, 486. 

11 Saintsbury, History of Criticism, III, 182. 

12 Causeries du lundi, VIII, 49. « Nouveaux lundis, XII, 125. 
* Ibid., V, 135. l6 Ibid., V, 437- 

14 Ibid., IX, 43. 17 Cf . supra, p. 38. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 



131 



and one may fairly wonder if he were always conscious of a critical 
purpose when he was retelling them. 

It will be remembered that there are several questions to be espe- 
cially applied to women. Concerning any woman to be studied the 
critic should ask, Was she pretty ? Was she ever in love ? If she was 
religious, what was the determining motive of her conversion? 1 In 
the large majority of his essays on women Sainte-Beuve himself answers 
the first two of these questions, and occasionally he answers all three, 
as in the case of Mme Swetchine, 2 but he rarely does more with the third 
question than to say perfunctorily that she was a devout Catholic, or 
a sincere Protestant, or had no religion. Of descriptions of personal 
appearance there are many: "On se demande d'abord de Mme de 
Motteville, comme de toute femme, si elle etait belle, et il parait bien 
qu'elle l'etait"; 3 this seems definitely to indicate that Sainte-Beuve 
always intended to ask this question about every woman he chose to 
study. Other examples are those of Mile de La Valliere, 4 Adrienne 
Lecouvreur, 5 Mme de Latour-Franqueville, 6 Gabrielle d'Estrees, 7 Mme de 
Verdelin, 8 Mme Dacier, 9 Marie Antoinette, 10 Mme Recamier 11 — these 
are a few among the many that might be cited. As to the second prob- 
lem in which Sainte-Beuve especially delighted, he practically always 
attempts to answer, when he is writing of a woman, the question 
whether or not she was ever in love. Examples are in the essays on Mme 
Swetchine, 12 on Julie de Lespinasse, whom he follows through two different 
love affairs, 13 on Mme d'Epinay, who loved Francueil and later Grimm, 14 
on Mme Recamier. 15 He makes much of the women who have been mis- 
tresses — Gabrielle d'Estrees, Mme de Maintenon, Ninon de L'Enclos, 
Mile de Lespinasse — the list is lengthy. As to the last question, What 
was the determining motive of a woman's conversion? we have said 
already that he considered this in only a few cases; two are worth citing, 
Joseph de Maistre's conversion of Mme Swetchine which Sainte- 
Beuve says "est devenue litterairement un fait eclatant," 16 and that of 



1 Nouveaux lundis, I, 213. 

2 Ibid. 

3 C miseries du lundi, V, 172. 

4 /Wd., 111,453- 

5 Ibid., I, 203. 

6 Ibid., II, 69. 
Ubid., VIII, 403. 

8 Nouveaux lundis, IX, 411. 



9 Causeries du lundi, IX, 512. 
10 Nouveaux lundis, X, 343. 
" Ibid., Ill, 13, etc. 

12 Ibid., I, 213. 

13 Causeries du lundi, II, 125 ff. 

14 Ibid., II, 200. 

15 Nouveaux lundis, III, 89. 

16 Causeries du lundi, XV, 82. 



132 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

Mme Dacier and her husband, who embraced Catholicism from motives 
of expediency and were suitably rewarded by Louis XIV. 1 

There can be no question of Sainte-Beuve's own use of his advice 
that the critic should gather the testimony of a man's contemporaries 
as to his character and conduct. He scarcely ever overlooks or neglects 
this process. In fully three-fourths of the essays which permitted 
this procedure he uses it. Indeed this recording of contemporary 
testimony is so well known as a fundamental characteristic of Sainte- 
Beuve that one need only give references to a few passages in which it 
is effectively applied. 2 

The principle that a man should be studied in his literary descend- 
ants, his artistic children, Sainte-Beuve uses rarely. However, a 
few striking cases are at hand, first as to Musset, Malherbe, and Rous- 
seau. M. de Musset has a host of imitators, who copy what imitators 
usually copy — form, surface, the "smart" tone, the sprightly gesture, 
the dashing faults, things which he himself might be able to carry off 
with a certain ease, 3 they laboriously copy. They imitate his vocabulary, 
they repeat the names of his girls — Manon, Ninon, Marion — his jingle 
of courtiers and marquises. They took the form and the bad habit; but 
the fire, the passion, the elevation, and the lyrical power they could not 
borrow from him. 4 One can detect the large amount of criticism of 
Musset which Sainte-Beuve managed to pack into this passage, con- 
cerned ostensibly only with his school of imitators. Similarly the dis- 
ciples of Malherbe (Racan and Maynard) are examined as exhibiting 
the merits and defects of their master. 5 Concerning the relationship 
of Rousseau with Lamennais, Sainte-Beuve says that passages in the 
Songe du philosophe of Rousseau recall to him passages in Les paroles 
oVun croyant, "II n'y a rien la qui doive etonner; le maitre, comme par 
• anticipation, s'est mis cette fois a ressembler au disciple: cela arrive 
parfois aux maitres. Rien ne ressemble a du mauvais ou a du mediocre 
Rousseau comme du bon Lamennais." 6 He calls the authors of comedies, 
proverbes and spectacles dans un fauteuil, disciples of Marivaux: "lis 
ont reconnu en Marivaux un aine sinon un maitre, et lui ont rendu plus 
d'un hommage en le rappelant ou en l'imitant"; 7 he passes in review 
the imitators of Chapelle and Bachaumont(Bouflers, Bertin, and others), 

1 Causeries du lundi, IX, 485. 

2 Ibid., I, 199, 393; II, 191, 400, 423; III, 292; VIII, 131; XV, 167; Nouveaux 
lundis, I, 203; V, 395, etc. 

3 Causeries du lundi, I, 305; V, 382. 

< Ibid., I, 305. s ibid., VIII, 69 ff. 6 Ibid., XV, 236. » Ibid., IX, 379. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 



133 



saying: "lis ont tous cela de commun, de ne pas prendre la nature au 
serieux, et de ne la regarder en sortant du cabaret ou du salon que pour 
y mettre une grimace et de l'enluminure"; 1 Pontmartin's impoliteness 
and excess are reflected in a disciple of his, and he would be much 
embarrassed by "des grossieretes de style de ce marquis-la." 2 Poetry 
in 1852, Sainte-Beuve says, is too much given to imitation; it is easy 
to adopt the externals of a poet's manner, but then one is only a copyist: 
"On l'etait, il y a quinze et vingt ans, lorsqu'on ramassait dans ses vers 
les epis tombes des gerbes de Lamartine; on Test aujourd'hui quand 
on ramasse les bouts de cigares d'Alfred de Musset." 3 

In Sainte-Beuve's program for the biographical critic comes a very 
important step, that of summing up the author and placing him in 
his family of minds, applying to him his "appellation vraie et necessaire." 4 
All the examples of his application of this rule are not so clear and true 
to type as that in the Chateaubriand article, where this master is called 
the prototype of his own Rene, 5 but they are numerous and recognizable. 
The citation of a few will suffice: M. de Feletz "me representait en 
perfection le galant homme litteraire " ; 6 Etienne Pasquier is "un 
judicieux tempere d'aimable"; 7 Montaigne is "notre Horace"; 8 
La Fontaine is "notre veritable Homere, l'Homere des Francais, qui le 
croirait ? c'est La Fontaine" ; 9 Carrel is "le Junius de la presse francaise. 10 
Jasmin "me parait une sorte de Manzoni languedocien " ;" Halevy "a 
le definir poetiquement, je dirais: C'etait une abeille qui n'avait pas 
trouve a se loger completement dans sa ruche, et qui etait en quete de 
faire son miel quelque part ailleurs"; 12 Gourville is "le type le plus 
complet et le plus parfait de l'homme d'affaires"; 13 the Due d'Antin is 
" le parfait courtisan " ; 14 Stendhal is named " un hussard romantique " ; IS 
Bossuet "c'est le genie hebreu, etendu, feconde par le Christianisme " ; l6 
the role of M. Denne-Baron is summed up thus: "II a ete un pre- 
curseur." 17 Other summaries are not so epigrammatic in tone and deal 
rather more with qualities and habits of mind. Two will be enough to 

1 Ibid., XI, 50. 



2 Nouveaux lundis, II, 14. 

* Causeries du lundi, V, 387. 

* Nouveaux lundis, III, 22. 

5 Causeries du lundi, I, 452. 

6 Ibid., p. 371. 

* Ibid., Ill, 268. 
8 Ibid., IV, 95. 

^ Ibid., VII, 519. 



10 Ibid., VI, 127. 

11 Ibid., IV, 322. 

12 Nouveaux lundis, II, 243. 

13 Causeries du lundi, V, 360. 
1A Ibid., p. 479. 

« Ibid., IX, 303. 
16 Ibid., X, 181. 
J 7 Ibid., p. 384. 



134 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

show the tone of these. Of Adrienne Lecouvreur he says that her 
"principal merite, au theatre comme dans la vie, a ete d'etre la verite, 
la nature, le contraire de la declamation meme. Ces simples mots 
resument le caractere de Mile Lecouvreur"; 1 and finally as to Leconte 
de Lisle: "C'est un contemplatif arme de couleurs et de sons, mais las 
et ennuye du spectacle meme, comme si regarder etait deja trop accorder 
a Faction." 2 As may be seen, some of these judgments and summaries 
are mere implications and adumbrations, but the literary phraseology 
does not conceal their real nature. 

This placing of the author in his category or his class is largely 
determined by two things, the discovery of his famille d'esprits and the 
isolation of his trait saillant or his faculte maitresse. It is necessary to 
distinguish between the trait saillant, the faculte maitresse, and the 
passion maitresse or dominante. 3 It seems to be a matter of degree; the 
exaggeration of the trait saillant leads to its becoming the faculte maitresse 
and the exaggeration to the point of madness of the faculte maitresse 
leads to its becoming the passion maitresse, which is no longer under 
control. An example or two of each will suffice. The trait saillant of 
Louis XIV was le bon sens, 4 in Montluc it was the love of arms and war, 5 
in Raynouard it was the fact that he came from the south of France, 6 
Hamilton was above all an observer. 7 The faculte maitresse is the exag- 
geration of the trait saillant. Sainte-Beuve, being the student of char- 
acter, the analyst, rather than the historian of action, preferred to deal 
with the dominant trait while it still was a quality of character rather 
than a principle of action. Therefore we find many studies of faculte s 
maitr esses and fewer of passions maitr esses. The faculte maitresse of 
Marie Antoinette in her last days resolved itself into mother-love, the 
determining motive of her every action; 8 Horace Vernet had a genius 
for painting and could not have helped being an artist even though he 
had struggled against it; 9 Moliere started in the theater when he was 
the merest child: "La vocation l'emporte, et le demon fait rage en lui 
pour ne plus cesser, ... le theatre avait besoin de lui, et il avait besoin 
du theatre." 10 Racine's leaning toward the theater did indeed pass over 
from a dominant trait into a passion maitresse. 11 The faculte maitresse 

1 Causeries du lundi, I, 220. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, II, 249. 7 Ibid., I, 96. 

3 See supra, p. 41. 8 Ibid., IV, 342. 

« Causeries du lundi, V, 314. 9 Nouveaux lundis, V, 43. 

s Ibid., XI, 56. I0 Ibid., p. 270. 

6 Ibid., V, 2. » Ibid., m, 59. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 135 

of Mme de Genlis was pedagogy: "Le gout d'enseigner ne doit point 
se considerer chez elle comme un travers, c'etait le fond meme et la 
direction de sa nature"; 1 Rigault too "etait ne professeur; il etait la 
comme chez lui, il y allait comme on va a la danse"; 2 Eugene Gandar 
also shared this call to be a teacher. 3 Fontenelle shared one thing 
with his great kinsman Corneille, intelligence: "Or, dans Fontenelle, 
cette partie d'esprit pur et de bel-esprit sans aucun reste de chaleur 
composa tout l'homme"; 4 as for Mile de Lespinasse: "Ainsi tout pour 
elle se rapporte a la passion, tout l'y ramene, et c'est la passion seule 
qui donne la clef de ce cceur etrange et de cette destinee si combattue"; 5 
and Bourdaloue felt inclined to the priesthood from his infancy: "Le 
merite de Bourdaloue s'annonca des l'enfance." 6 A striking instance 
of the self-determination of a man's category Sainte-Beuve finds in 
Piron, who was, he says, a sort of machine for making epigrams: "Talle- 
mant portait des anecdotes, Petrarque distillait des sonnets, La Fontaine 
poussait des fables, Piron etemuait des epigrammes — etemuer, c'etait 
son mot a lui. Eh bien! on ne retient pas un eternument." 7 Sainte- 
Beuve's interest and faith in the faculte maitresse are testified to by the 
fact that in about half of the essays on persons he isolates and discusses 
this quality, generally using it to place the person in the group or class 
to which he belongs. Of the passion maitresse which amounts to obses- 
sion Sainte-Beuve cites several examples in giving his and Pope's 
theory 8 but finds no occasion to study extensively this aspect of madness 
in any of the writers he takes up. 

Of the conception of families of minds Sainte-Beuve does not make 
so frequent or so practical a use. It is not an idea that admits of scien- 
tific or even definite delimitations. It was indeed something that, while 
it was very real, remained a bit mystic and intangible. Still Sainte- 
Beuve had it in his consciousness, and again and again it rises above the 
threshold to figure in the analysis of the person under consideration. 
We have a few instances in which he definitely assigns a man to his 
famille d'esprits. Renan, for example, is given a place in the ranks of 
the high intelligences, among the Montesquieus, the Buffons, the 
Rousseaus of the French nature rather than among the Chaulieus, the 
Pirons, the Voltaires, assigning the one group to the Gallic, the other to 
the Celtic, strain: "Dans un pays comme la France, il importe qu'il 

1 Causeries du lundi, III, 37. s Ibid., II, 141. 

2 Nouveaux lundis, I, 259. 6 Ibid., IX, 264. 

3 Ibid., XII, 341. 7 Nouveaux lundis, VII, 409. 

4 Causeries du lundi, III, 316. 8 Ibid., VIII, 129. 



136 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

vienne de temps en temps des intelligences elevees et serieuses qui fassent 
contrepoids a Fesprit malin, moqueur, sceptique, incredule, du fonds de 
la race; et M. Renan est une de ces intelligences." 1 The distinction in 
French literature between the Gaulois strain and the other, which he 
sometimes called the Celtic strain, he recurs to in other places. Of the 
opposite family to Renan is Beranger, assigned to la race gauloise: 
" Voyez Voltaire, Moliere, La Fontaine, et Rabelais et Villon ses aieux." 2 
Saint Evremond "nous represente toute une race de voluptueux dis- 
tingues et disparus, qui n'ont laisse qu'un nom: M. de Cramail, Mitton, 
M. de Treville; mais il est plus complet que pas un." 3 There remains 
the case of Cowper: 

II faut reconnaitre les diverses families d'esprits et de talents. ... Cowper 
est le poete de la famille, quoiqu'il n'ait ete ni epoux ni pere. ... Les poetes 
ourageux et hardis com me Byron, les natures mondaines et vives comme Thomas 
Moore ou Hazlitt devaient assez peu l'aimer," etc. 4 

This completes the examination of Sainte-Beuve's critical practice 
as concerns those biographical, as it were biological, dicta which he formu- 
lated for the typical procedure of the critic who would make a scientific 
approach to his subject. We have seen that while he did not consistently 
and constantly apply all the precepts in any one essay, he had them con- 
stantly in mind, and in specific cases he found in one or more of these 
formulae, these avenues of approach, the road into the very heart of his 
subject. 

It remains to investigate Sainte-Beuve's practice in the aesthetic, 
the artistic, the literary treatment of a subject. The principles upon 
which he himself says that a judgment should be based have been drawn 
together from his own work; these fundamental universal principles 
are taste, truth, tradition, logic, consistency, and, occupying a minor 
and by no means so stable a place, morality. 5 

But before examining his practice it would perhaps be well to find 
an answer to the question, Does Sainte-Beuve render judgments, does 
he habitually or often give or adumbrate a final appraisement 6 or advance 
an absolute evaluation? Seeking an answer to this question we will 
divide the essays into three groups on somewhat arbitrary lines: 
(1) essays dealing with periods or epochs, such as "De la critique lit- 
teraire sous l'empire," 7 "De la poesie en 1865 "; 8 (2) articles devoted to 

1 Nouveaux lundis, II, 399. s See supra, pp. 54 ft". 

2 Causer ies du lundi, II, 291. 6 See supra, pp. 46 ft. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, XIII, 455. 7 Causer ies du lundi, I, 60. 

4 Causeries du lundi, XI, 186. 8 Nouveaux lundis, X, 113. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 137 

the life and works of one man, which constitute the large mass of Sainte- 
Beuve's work and compose his characteristic production; (3) essays 
dealing with a single work, such as those on Flaubert's Madame Bovary 
and Salammbo and on Feuillet's Sibylle. 1 

That he considers it possible to pass final judgment on an entire 
age is witnessed by the fact that in studying the "Mai de Rene" he 
says that there are times when a whole age suffers from some such 
spiritual malady, and he calls Baudelaire's sadness " le dernier symptome 
d'une generation malade." 2 Three other sweeping judgments are strik- 
ing: one on the seventeenth century, the eloquent passage beginning, 
"Saluons et reconnaissons aujourd'hui la noble et forte harmonie du 
grand siecle," 3 and leading up to the domination of Boileau in the litera- 
ture of the age ; the second passage is his comprehensive summary of the 
realism of Flaubert and Zola, pointing out its faults and shortcomings, 
condemning it on the grounds that it provides no place for transcending 
facts and therefore fails to be art; 4 and, finally, his opinion on the state 
of poetry in 1852, saying that there is plenty of intelligence and skill 
but no inspiration. 5 

Conclusive and apparently final judgments upon persons, individual 
authors, or thinkers are common enough. A few of the most interesting 
examples will indicate the scope and certainty of Sainte-Beuve's judg- 
ments. Two occur on Beranger: " Pour ne pas abuser des termes, Byron, 
Milton, Pindare restent seule les vraiment grands poetes, et Beranger 
n'est qu'un poete charmant. Telle est ma conviction, que je viens de me 
confirmer a moi par une entiere lecture"; 6 and the other: "Resume! 
Beranger, comme poete, est un des plus grands, non le plus grand de 
notre age ... dans cette perfection tant celebree, il entre aussi bien du 
melange. Compare aux poetes d'autrefois, il est du groupe second et 
encore si rare des Burns, des Horace, des La Fontaine"; but they are 
higher in rank than he is because they never gave themselves over to 
merely partisan feeling. 7 His summary of Rousseau contains both 
praise and blame: 

Je n'ai pu indiquer qu'en courant dans l'auteur des Confessions les grands 
cotes par lesquels il demeure un maitre, que saluer cette fois le createur de la 
reverie, celui qui nous a inocule le sentiment de la nature et le sens de la realite, 

1 Causeries du lundi, XIII, 346; Nouveaux lundis, IV, 31; V, 1. 

2 Correspondance, I, 220. s Causeries du lundi, V, 399. 

3 Causeries du lundi, VI, 511. 6 Ibid., II, 298. 

4 Nouveaux lundis, IV, 136. 7 Ibid., p. 305. 



138 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

le pere de la litterature d'intime et de la peinture d'interieure. Quel dommage 
que l'orgueil misanthropique s'y mele, et que des tons cyniques fassent tache 
au milieu de tant de beautes charmantes et solides. 1 

The judgments on George Sand, Merimee, Eugene Sue, and Dumas 
pere, comparing them collectively and individually with Balzac and 
pronouncing their real valuation in the literary history of the future, 
are to the point. 2 So also is the appraisement of Malherbe as a poet 
who just missed being great: "Nous nous sommes convaincus que ce 
bon sens pratique n'avait qu'a s'appliquer a de dignes objets pour se 
concilier avec la grandeur"; he failed in this respect, but in others he 
was un vrai maitre. 3 Rollin is put in his proper perspective — he makes 
no appeal to our scientific generation, for we demand a medium of expres- 
sion quite different from his and " celui du bon Rollin, certes,y echouerait. 
... Dans tout ceci, en ressongeant au bon Rollin dont le nom revient 
encore par un reste d'habitude, je crois qu'il est impossible d'en faire 
autre chose qu'un honorable, un pieux et lointain regret." 4 La Touche 
is set up as an awful example of the fate of the virulent critic; all his 
real merits are hidden by his violence. 5 Paul Louis Courier 

n'etait pas un tres-grand caractere, nous le verrons; je dirai meme tout d'abord 
que ce n'etait pas un esprit tres-etendu ni tres-complet dans ses points de vue. 
II voit bien, mais par parties; il a de vives idees, mais elles ne sont ni tres- 
variees ni tres-abondantes : cela devient tres-sensible quand on le lit de suite 
et dans sa continuite. 6 

There is a final appraisement of Rivarol: "II n'etait point un homme 
de genie, mais c'etait plus qu'un homme d'esprit: il realisait tout a 
fait l'ideal de l'homme de talent, tel qu'il l'a defini: 'Le talent, c'est un 
art mele d'enthousiasme.' " 7 The Pensees at the end of Volume XI of 
the Causeries du lundi are replete with these completed judgments, 
too numerous to be quoted in full. Take for an example that on Ampere: 

Ampere, comme erudit, manque de rigueur, et comme ecrivain, de couleur. 
Avec cela, prenez-le comme curieux et causant de tout, il a bien de l'instruction 
et de l'agrement. ... Tout le feu d'Ampere se passe dans la recherche, et il ne 
lui en reste rien pour l'execution. En cela, il n'est pas artiste. 8 

Barbier does not understand his own talent: "II s'y noye ... ce qui me 
fait dire de lui: 'Barbier, c'est un poete de hazard.'"* There are similar 

1 Causeries du lundi, III, 97. 

3 Ibid., II, 460. 6 Ibid., VI, 322. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, XIII, 423. 7 Ibid., V, 83. 

4 Causeries du lundi, VI, 281. 8 Ibid., XI, 478. 
s Ibid., Ill, 491. 9 Ibid., p. 448. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 139 

appraisals of Lamennais, Barante, De Vigny, Villemain, Lamartine, 
Genin, and notably of Thiers and Balzac; about the latter he is mali- 
ciously witty: "Balzac — le romancier qui savait le mieux la corruption 
de son temps, et il etait meme homme a y ajouter"; 1 but Sainte-Beuve 
admired him as an artist. 

In summary then, it is clear that Sainte-Beuve did judge authors, 
did offer a final appraisement, and was not always content to rest 
in his analysis. It is noticeable, however, that it is chiefly in the 
cases of the minor writers that he gives what may accurately be called 
a literary judgment; he took for granted the positions and the rights of 
the real giants — Goethe, Shakespeare, Horace; 2 positions so permanent 
and elevated as theirs needed no readjustment from the critic. 

When Sainte-Beuve says that the critic's processes are based upon 
the principles of taste, truth, tradition, logic and consistency, and 
morality, he did not mean, of course, that he criticized first upon one of 
these principles and then upon another, so that the student of his opinion 
could discriminate and say, "This judgment is based upon taste, this 
upon tradition," etc. Rather are the elements of critical judgment 
mingled and interamalgamated into a unified whole. In these judg- 
ments which cover entire works of art, or the whole character of a man, it 
is the completely trained critical mind speaking, and one cannot isolate 
the specific principles and criteria, though it is more nearly possible to 
do this when details of matter and technique are under judgment. It 
is, however, not impossible to offer examples of judgments in which 
approval or disapproval has a dominant flavor of taste — for the matter 
of that, certain exceptional and striking verdicts may be based entirely 
upon taste, certain others may lean chiefly upon tradition, certain others 
make the appeal to truth. It is these more unmixed judgments that 
are offered with the warning that they are seldom quite unmixed. 

Again we are following an arbitrary grouping: (1) judgments of 
whole works of art or a man's work as a whole; (2) judgments of detail 
or aspects of matter and technique. 

Predominantly based upon taste, though always with tradition in 
the background, is a group of verdicts upon whole works of art. 
The opinion on Flaubert's Madame Bovary is worth quoting because 
posterity has largely confirmed it: 

Une qualite precieuse distingue M. Flaubert des autres observateurs ... ila 
le style. II en a meme un peu trop, et sa plume se complait a des curiosites ... 

1 Ibid., p. 483. 

2 See "Precepts and Procgdes" pp. 83 ff. However, he leaves a very definite idea 
as to his opinion of Balzac, who could certainly not be classed as a minor writer. 



140 SAINTE-BEUVES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

de description continue qui nuisent parfois a. Feffet total. Chez lui, les 
choses ou les figures les plus faites pour etre regardees sont un peu eteintes ... par 
le trop de saillie des objects environnants. Emma Bovary elle-meme ... nous 
est si souvent decrite en detail et par le menu, que physiquement je ne me la 
represente pas tres-bien dans son ensemble ni d'une maniere bien distincte et 
definitive. 1 

All the persons in Madame Bovary he says are bad and disagreeable, 
displaying not one touch of humanity or heroism; he condemns in 
the book its mass of unnecessary, disgusting, and unnecessarily disgusting, 
details: "Apres tout un livre n'est pas la realite meme." 2 The same 
author's Salammbo comes in for substantially the same criticisms, 
summed up in what amounts to a final appraisement: " On Fa [Salammbo] 
beaucoup lu et on le lira; mais le relira-t-on? La lecture d'un roman- 
poeme doit-elle produire sur nous le meme effet que si Fon entrait dans 
un bataillon herisse de piques ?" 3 The book is too difficult to read in its 
mass of details and its inhumanity of subject-matter. Flaubert by 
way of reply to this severe condemnation asked Sainte-Beuve if he was 
sure that he had not merely suffered a nervous revulsion from the subject- 
matter of the book; 4 the critic made no public reply to this inquiry, but 
in consonance with what he has repeatedly said elsewhere we are sure 
of his saying in effect: "Apres tout un livre n'est pas la realite meme." 
For even though things so revolting do exist in life, the presentation of 
them constitutes a violation of taste, that indefinable perception of 
unity, of simplicity, of dignity: "L'amour du sense, de Feleve, de ce 
qui est grand sans phrases." Elsewhere he exclaims without qualifica- 
tion: "Voila, un bon, un excellent livre." 5 Of Raynouard's Templiers: 

II est impossible de prodiguer moins qu'il ne Fa fait les moyens nouveaux, 
et de tirer un plus heureux parti des quatre ou cinq mots ou hemistiches qui 
deciderent du triomphe de sa piece. II avait ete econome de sublime, mais, 
du peu qu'il y avait mis, rien n'avait ete perdu. 6 

Roucher's poem Les Mots is "trop imbu des fadeurs sentimentales du 
siecle," etc. 7 Michelet's study of Louis XIV and Le Due de Bourgogne 
is marred by the haste of his manner: 

La narration, proprement dite, qui n'a jamais ete son fort, est presque 
tout sacrifice. Ne cherchez point de chaussee historique, bien cimentee, 
solide et continue: le parti pris des points de vue absolus domine; on court 

1 Causer ies du lundi, XIII, 351. 

2 Ibid., p. 360. s Ibid., I, 315. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, IV, 93. 6 Causer ies du lundi, V, 12. 

4 Ibid., IV, 435- 7 Ibid., XI, 133. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 141 

avec lui sur les cimes ; sur les pics, sur les aiguilles de granit, qu'il se choisit 
comme a plaisir pour en faire ses belvederes. On saute de clocher en clocher. 
II semble s'etre propose une gageure impossible et qu'il a pourtant tenue, 
d'ecrire l'histoire avec une suite d'eclairs. 1 

M. C. de Lafayette he counsels to cut down his Pokme des champs and to 
perfect its technique: "Le dernier et huitieme livre me parait tralnant 
et trop raisonne." 2 The Crise of Octave Feuillet has "trop de style 
ou de ce qu'on appelle ainsi: les personnages parlent trop comme on 
ecrit quand on se soigne; c'est du style habille et pare." 3 "J'etais ne, 
surtout pour etre un professeur de rhetorique, tant ... je prends feu sur 
ces details et ces miseres de phrases," 4 he writes. 

Discussions of passages and details on the basis of taste occur 
frequently, though quotable instances are not easy to isolate from their 
contexts. The following are typical: Of an expression on one of Sully 
Prudhomme's poems he says, "Mordre Vinconnu est dur; le gout, ce je 
ne sais quoi d'indefinissable qui devrait etre de tous les temps et de 
toutes les ecoles, rejette de pareilles expressions"; 5 Mme de Girardin 
lacks taste completely and her work shows the result, as in this passage, 
bienheureux seraphins y vous habitants des cieux, etc., on which 
Sainte-Beuve comments: "Ces seraphins, qui tombent du ciel ou du 
plafond, viennent la comme, en d'autres temps, seraient venus les 
Amours et les Cupidons; on les introduisait sans y croire"; 6 as to 
Moreau he criticizes, analyzes, and concludes: "II lui manque la purete 
et le gout dans le style"; 7 even Chateaubriand in Les memoir es d'Outre- 
tombe disturbs this taste of Sainte-Beuve's; 8 the article on Le Brun- 
Pindare is full of opinions on his verse, the critic using such expressions 
as indecence d'adulation, execrable, hideux, and, on the other hand, 
mollesse heureuse to describe it; 9 about Parny's poetry he employs 
these adjectives: "pure, tendre, egale, d'un seul souffle, d'une seule 
veine," and continues, "simplicite exquise, indefinissable, qui se sent 
et qui ne se comment pas"; 10 Monselet's La Bibliotheque en vacances 
stopped just on the verge of being in bad taste, "un pas de plus, on est 
dans la gaminerie: le gout comme la justice conseillait et commandait 

1 Nouveaux lundis, II, 112. 6 Causeries du lundi, III, 391. 

2 Ibid., p. 288. 7 Ibid., IV, 65. 
*Ibid., V, 8. *Ibid., 1,437. 

4 Correspondance, II, 169. 9 Ibid., V, 160. 

s Ibid., X, 161. " Ibid., XV, 293. 



142 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

de rester en deca." 1 Paul Verlaine is counseled by Sainte-Beuve to be 
a little bit more careful in versification; the critic saying of certain 
cesuras and coupes that " Poreille la plus exercee a la poesie s'y deroute 
et ne peut s'y reconnaitre. II y a limite a, tout. Je ne puis admettre 
ce mot retrait qui decele une mauvaise odeur," etc. 2 "II lui arrive 
[a Pontmartin] de manquer de propriete dans les termes. ... Voyez un 
peu ... dans quel jargon metaphorique il retrace l'etat des esprits au 
sortir du regime de la Terreur." 3 A poem of Lacaussade has "trop 
d'irritation. Je distingue entre l'irritation et l'indignation : celle-ci 
peut etre une muse, non pas Pautre." 4 The De Goncourt brothers in 
their study of eighteenth-century women Used many technical and semi- 
technical words: "Un peu trop de scintillement, dis-je, et de cliquetis 
est l'inconvenient de cette quantite de mots et de traits rapportes de 
toutes parts et rapproches. ... J'y voudrais parfois un peu plus de 
repos, un peu plus d'air, d'espace, le temps de souffler et de reprendre 
haleine." 5 Sainte-Beuve praises the verse from De Vigny's Eloa, 
"Monte aussi vite au del que V eclair en descend — est un de ces vers 
immenses, d'une seule venue, qui embrassent en un clin d'ceil les deux 
poles." 6 Of a poem of Boulay Paty he says, "c'est trop de mots pour 
trop peu de sens." 7 Such judgments as these, taken at random from 
thousands, have this in common, that they are all based on Sainte- 
Beuve's personal and instinctive taste and on that only. 

The judgments based on truth, for which term he sometimes sub- 
stitutes that of reality, are easier to identify and are abundant. This 
was partly due to the fact that Sainte-Beuve was a lover of "truth," 
a scientifically minded man, and partly due to the fact that it came his 
way to consider the realists of his own day and to examine their pre- 
tensions to truth. Such judgments are those he offers on the two novels 
of Octave Feuillet, Sibylle and La petite comtesse. Of the former he 
says: 

Ma conclusion, c'est que les caracteres, dans cette Eistoire de Sibylle, ne 
sont pas vrais, consistants, humainement possibles; ils n'ont pas ete assez 
Studies ... sur le vif. C'est un livre trop fait de tete et d'apres quelque 
inspiration demi-poetique et revee, demi-actuelle et entrevue, pas assez fondue 
ni assez murie. 8 

1 Nouveaux lundis, X, 88. s Ibid., IV, 6. 

3 Correspondance, II, in. 6 Ibid., VI, 411. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, II, 7. 7 Ibid., X, 183. 

* Ibid., p. 256. 8 Ibid., V, 36. 



PRACTICE IN CRITIQISM 143 

And he questions in the same spirit the latter work: "C'est inhumain, 
c'est dur et bien peu naturel. En fait, les personnages etant ce qu'ils 
sont et les choses ainsi posees et amenees, que se passerait-il dans le 
monde, dans la vie reelle et hors du roman P" 1 His dissatisfaction with 
those men and works which falsify life is outspoken and uncompromising; 
as for example on Dominique of Fromentin, which forces its psychology: 
"Ici ... j'oserai me permettre une critique: ... le lecteur n'est pas 
satisfait. ... Le roman n'est pas d' accord avec la verite humaine, avec 
l'entiere verite telle que les grands peintres de la passion l'ont de tout 
temps concue." 2 Even George Sand receives a shaft: "Elle ne calomnie 
jamais la nature humaine, elle ne 1'embellit pas non plus; elle veut la 
rehausser mais elle la force et la distend en visant a l'agrandir " ; 3 she, 
like Balzac and Eugene Sue, forces nature into a mold of her own making. 4 
He admires Feydeau's Fanny as being "une histoire vecue"; 5 and he 
commends Louis Veuillot for being "un peintre vigoureux de la realite." 6 
Certain realists he condemns because he considers them false to life 
in the fact that they go out of their way to develop and accumulate 
whatever is sinister and disagreeable. He therefore condemns the 
De Goncourt brothers because, not being content with impartially 
setting down the crudities of life, they went deliberately seeking crudities, 
which is by way of being false to life and to art. Any undue collection 
of disagreeable matter is a misrepresentation of facts: "Ne forcent-ils 
pas le reel en le decoupant de la sorte ?" he questions, "ne lui donnent-ils 
pas un relief sans accompagnement ni contre-partie ? " 7 His kindred 
judgment of Balzac's Cousine Bette and other stories is famous: of 
Cousine Bette he says that her vindictiveness was so exaggerated as to 
falsify human nature: "Notre societe gatee et vicieuse ne comporte 
point de ces haines atroces et de ces vengeances. Nos peches certes 
ne sont pas mignons, nos crimes pourtant sont moins gros"; when one 
has finished reading Les parents pauvres one has need of a little refresh- 
ment, "de se plonger dans quelque chant de Milton, in lucid streams, 
dans les purs et lucides courants, comme dit le poete." 8 In other cases 
he condemned a too detailed treatment of fact, or an unnecessary 
fidelity to it, without unification or imagination. It is on this ground 
that he objects to Flaubert 9 and Zola, of the latter of whom he says: 

1 Ibid., p. 18. s im., XIV, 176. 

3 Ibid., VII, 146. 6 Nouveaux lundis, I, 51. 

3 Causeries du lundi, II, 461. 7 Ibid., X, 401. 

4 Ibid. 8 Causeries du lundi, II, 459. 
9 Ibid., XIII, 362; Nouveaux lundis, IV, 35 ff. 



144 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

"En reduisant Fart a n'etre que la yerite, elle me parait hors de cette 
verite." In shutting out the ideal, art becomes false. 1 Francois Coppee, 
even, becomes unnatural in becoming too pessimistic. 2 Gautier he 
accuses of "une repugnance pour le reel proprement dit et une habitude 
de tout voir a travers un certain cristal"; 3 and Alfred de Vigny, too, 
"ne voit la realite qu'a travers un prisme de cristal qui en change le 
ton, la couleur, les lignes," which leads him to "alterer et fausser l'his- 
toire" inLa grandeur et servitude militaires. 4 Le rouge et le noir of Stendhal 
"manque aussi de cette suite et de cette moderation dans le developpement 
qui peuvent seules donner idee d'un vrai tableau de mceurs" and the per- 
sonages "ne sont pas des etres vivants, mais des automates ingenieuse- 
ment construits," etc. 5 C. de Lafayette's main fault in writing nature 
and farmyard poetry "c'est surtout d'avoir mal observe et connu son 
sujet," to have attributed to a hen the sentiments of a woman. 6 On 
a detail of a poem of Mme Valmore, Sainte-Beuve says: "L'image ... 
est saisissante; on sent que c'est pris sur nature, et que ce n'etait pas 
une fiction du poete"; 7 and he praises Parny in these terms: "La 
nature parle." 8 An interesting light is thrown on his judgments with 
this basis by the fact that he heartily commends a minor, if not a third- 
rate, author, Fromentin, for approximating the synthesis of reality and 
the ideal, a combination which was his own ideal of true art. 9 It is 
to the credit of Sainte-Beuve's honesty that he immediately adds that 
Fromentin does lean a little toward the side of idealization, forcing 
reality lightly in a romantic way. It is clear from this series of observa- 
tions that the criterion of truth to life or reality was one of the most 
important of the principles whereby Sainte-Beuve formed his critical 
judgments. 

When Sainte-Beuve judged a work or a man on a basis of tradition 
he might have in mind the purely classical tradition which during the 
whole of his third period he held in veneration, or he might have in mind 
the body of good usage and cumulating opinion built up through all 
the ages, not exclusively classical, but recording the usage and opinion 
of all authoritative writers. In certain cases Sainte-Beuve makes 
direct appeal to some classical writer whom he considered authorita- 
tive, to Horace for instance; or he compares directly the seventeenth- 

1 Correspondance, II, 314. 

2 Ibid., p. 113. 6 Nouveaux lundis, II, 287. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, VI, 267. 7 Ibid., XII, 159. 

4 Ibid., p. 421. 8 Causeries du lundi, XV, 294. 

5 Causeries du lundi, IX, 330. 9 Nouveaux lundis, VII, 147. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 145 

century manner of describing nature with that of the ancients 1 and 
the nineteenth-century manner of C. de Lafayette with that of Hesiod 
and Virgil and Lucretius. 2 In other cases he assumes the authority of 
the rhetoricians and of accepted artists. In larger, vaguer matters he 
seems to have as his standard the practice of the ancient classical writers 
or of those later writers who imitated them. In minor matters, and 
matters of form, style, and technique in general, he brings all things 
to the bar of the seventeenth century. 

He writes to a correspondent concerning his small esteem of Balzac: 
"In spite of everything, I have remained of the classical school, that of 
Horace and the singer of Windsor Forest."* It is no wonder that the 
admirer of Horace and Pope should condemn his own generation for 
demesure, its lack of moderation, its inerudition. When he appeals 
for "truth" he is speaking for classical truth, faithfulness to typical 
and universal human nature; and in the name of this sane, tested 
tradition he begs for le juste milieu and protests against the violence 
of Hugo's romanticism, the brutality of Balzac's realism, the flabbiness 
of Chateaubriand's sentimentalism, the squalor of the naturalism of 
Flaubert and the De Goncourts, and the corruption of Baudelaire's 
consumptive muse. Merimee is compared and contrasted directly 
with the ancient writers of history as to his volume Le faux Demetrius. 
Cicero, Livy, Xenophon, and Caesar are quoted and Merimee is called 
"fidele a l'esprit classique." 4 Instances are almost innumerable of 
references to the classics and comparisons of French writers with them. 
Horace is compared with Beranger, with Boileau, with Montaigne, with 
Beaumarchais; 5 Cicero with Foucault and with others; 6 Virgil with 
George Sand, with C. de Lafayette, with Flaubert, and with the 
De Goncourt brothers; 7 Theocritus with George Sand, with Leopold 
Robert, and with Fromentin; 8 Lucretius with Seiyes and Cowper; 9 
Euripides with Racine; 10 Homer with Fenelon, Bossuet, and Milton." 
In French literature more narrowly it is the seventeenth century which 
provided him with a measure, and the writers of that epoch were his 

1 Causeries du lundi, XI, 46 ff. 3 Quoted by Babbitt, op. cit., p. 137. 

2 Nouveaux lundis, II, 272 ff. 4 Causeries du lundi, VII, 378. 
s Ibid., II, 289; VI, 503; Nouveaux lundis, VI, 250, 376. 

6 Ibid., Ill, 460. 

7 Causeries du lundi, I, 352; Nouveaux lundis, II, 280; IV, 83; X, 409. 
^Causeries du lundi, I, 362; X, 429; Nouveaux lundis, VII, 130. 

9 Causeries du lundi, V, 197; XI, 135. 
10 Nouveaux lundis, VI, 46. " Ibid., II, 131, 340; XIII, 184 



146 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

standards of excellence; La Fontaine is compared with Lamartine, with 
Courier, with Etienne, with Cowper, with Nodier and Ducis; 1 Pascal 
with Napoleon, with Vauvenargues, with Bonald, with Beaumarchais, 
with Joufiroy, with Gibbon, with Scherer; 2 Racine with Chenier, with 
Ducis, with Cowper, with Parny; 3 Retz with Condorcet, with Pellisson, 
with Mirabeau, with Walpole and Malouet; 4 Bossuet with Monald and 
Montesquieu, among others. 5 

Sainte-Beuve makes use of the criterion of logic and consistency in 
a few cases. The case of Zola's Therese Racquin has already been cited; 
Flaubert's Salammbo is open to a similar attack when the author 

decrit ... ce qu'on ne voit pas, ce qu'on ne peut raisonnablement remarquer. 
Par example, si Ton marche la nuit dans Pobscurite ou a la simple clarte des 
etoiles, on ne devrait pas decrire minutieusement des pierres bleues sur les- 
quelles on marche, ou des taches jaunes au poitrail d'un cheval, puisque 
personne ne les voit; 6 

and in giving to the barbarians who are attacking Carthage all the latest 
machines of war he is violating probability, since it would be impossible 
to procure them. 7 A third instance will illustrate this minor point; it 
is that of a verse in Les templiers by Raynouard, where to enhance the 
pitifulness of the slaughter the herald tells of the large number who were 
slain: "Sire, ils etaient trois mille." Why, questions Sainte-Beuve, if 
they were so large a number did they surrender without resistance to 
the Saracen ? Raynouard has overreached himself. 8 

The fifth and last criterion, that of morality, played a very minor 
part in Sainte-Beuve's critical practice. Indeed he was more often 
advocatus diaboli than the censor of public morals. His attitude is 
summed up in the words "ne soyons pas nous-memes plus rigoriste qu'il 
ne convient." 9 It is not that he shunned the consideration of moral 
obliquities in the men he studied, but that he palliated them and glossed 
them over. Nevertheless he does at times condemn severely, as he 
did in the case of Talleyrand: "La venalite, en eflet, c'est la. la plaie 
de Talleyrand, une plaie hideuse, un chancre rongeur et qui envahit 

1 Causeries du lundi, I, 25; VI, 357, 490; XI, 163; Nouveaux lundis, IV, 315, 404. 

2 Causeries du lundi, I, 182; III, 143; IV, 438; VI, 133; VIII, 297, 450; XV, 55. 

3 Nouveaux lundis, III, 334; IV, 331; XI, 169; XIII, 165. 

* Causeries du lundi, III, 270; XIV, 196; Nouveaux lundis, III, 299; IV, 16; 
XI, 200. 

s Causeries du lundi, IV, 435; VII, 65. 

6 Nouveaux lundis, IV, 89. 8 Causeries du lundi, V, 12. 

t Ibid., IV, 74. 9 Nouveaux lundis, V, 9. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 



147 



le fond"; 1 and he elsewhere speaks of his corruption consommee. 2 He 
deplores too great an appeal to the senses in Mile de Maupin, 3 and 
notices the grossierete of the sixteenth century. 4 The youthful Organt 
epic poem of Saint- Just is frankly condemned for immorality, and 
Sainte-Beuve comments that in its author "les vices honteux avaient 
precede en lui les vices f eroces ; au fond de ce cceur il y avait une caverne 
toute preparee." 5 

There are a few points not provided for in Sainte-Beuve's formal 
declaration of critical principles, noted above in " Precepts and Proctitis" 
which ought to be tested by an examination of his own practice; such 
for example as his choice of subjects. He declares that a subject should 
be of immediate interest to his readers, that it be timely. In most 
of the essays we find this principle of timeliness observed, a new biog- 
raphy, publication of correspondence, a new striking work of an artist; 
Sainte-Beuve's declaration that the critic must not be premature ou 
retarde seems to have been his own rule of choice. 6 

He points out the difficulties and dangers of judging a work which 
is far in advance of the public's acceptance, or in opposition to it; in 
this matter he himself was fearless, never hesitating to commit himself. 
He had many prejudices but no cowardices. So far from fearing to run 
counter to public opinion, he seemed to enjoy it and quite clearly often 
felt it his duty to do so. Chateaubriand was the idol of France at the 
time Sainte-Beuve wrote his epoch-making book attacking him, and 
he unhesitatingly pointed out the faults he saw in Hugo, in Lamartine, 
in Balzac, in Lamennais, when they were literary heroes at the height 
of their fame. He was equally bold in reviving and defending those 
to whom the public was indifferent or hostile. His first great work of 
criticism was a Tableau de la litter ature francaise au i6 me siecle, defend- 
ing the hitherto discredited and forgotten literature of the Pleiade. He 
came valiantly to the defense of Feydeau when his Fanny had stirred 
popular hostility, and he defended Flaubert's Madame Bovary under the 
same circumstances. 

Sainte-Beuve enunciated as a practical working principle the rule 
that the critic must find out all that he possibly could about his subject, 
approaching it from every possible side before writing about it. One 

1 Ibid., XII, 43. a Ibid., p. 59. 3 ibid., VI, 286. 

4 Causeries du lundi, VII, 44. s Ibid., V, 338. 

6 Interesting light is thrown on this matter by Sainte-Beuve's notes to M. Cheron, 
curator of the Bibliotheque ImpSriale, to whom he applied for the books needed for the 
various articles. 



148 SAINTE-BEUYES CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 

can say without reservation that Sainte-Beuve applied this principle 
uniformly in practice. His patience and application were indefatigable, 
his erudition enormous. His biographers tell striking stories of his 
scrupulousness as to facts, his meticulous care in spelling and in other 
matters which seemed very minor, his untiring pursuit of the truth and 
the whole truth. Whatever discoveries and reversals of opinion sub- 
sequent scholarship may have made, it can be maintained that from the 
point of view of his own age and of material available to him he was 
practically never mistaken in his facts and rarely in his opinions. 1 

The critic, says Sainte-Beuve, even though he have a definite critical 
procedure, should ideally have no fixed ideas or a priori philosophical 
and social principles; he must be able to attack his subject without 
hypothesis, with no ready-made categories ; he must pursue his examina- 
tion with his eyes wide open, in that state of mind which Babbitt calls 
"the wisdom of disillusion" but for which one would like to coin the 
term " unillusion." Sainte-Beuve fulfilled in this matter his own require- 
ment in a remarkable degree. He was, as so human-minded a man was 
sure to be, full of personal emotions, but he usually knew how to keep 
them from functioning as prejudices. He had examined, sampled as it 
were, man}- philosophies, he had sometimes exchanged his old philo- 
sophical lamps for new, but he had not committed himself; he sought 
no haven in any absolutism; he was a relativist, a pragmatist born 
out of season, allowing for all and any phenomena that emerged from the 
ever-flowing stream of things. But for all that Sainte-Beuve had no 
conditioning philosophy, no system of thought or school of social practice 
to which he committed himself; he was not always an impartial judge 
and at times he was a very severe one. His personal likes and dislikes 
color his judgment, particularly of his contemporaries. His attack 
on Hugo and his associated romanticists, in the regrettable article "Les 
regrets" 2 is a case in point; his hatred of Balzac appears in some of 
his articles on the great novelist; 3 and his over-admiration of Mme 
Desbordes-Valmore could only be the result of a personal feeling. 4 His 
mere dislike, personal as well as literary, of Chateaubriand, his opposi- 
tion to Lamartine stand out in his papers on these two artists. 

A very interesting injunction of Sainte-Beuve's, that the critic in 
his criticism should preserve the tone of his subject, is exemplified in 
his own works. It is fascinating to see his critique taking on the atmos- 

1 Leon Seche, Saintt-Beuve (Paris, 1904)* 3 Ibid. y III, 69. 

2 Causeries du lundi, VI, 397. *Nouveaux lundis, XII, 134. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 149 

phere of the man that he is studying, as in the essays on Rabelais, 1 on 
Montluc, 3 on Joinville, 3 in which his style takes on an antique flavor; 
that on Marivaux, where he catches himself up on this very thing: " Mais 
je m'apercois que j'ai a me garder moi-meme d'aller l'imiter en le definis- 
sant." 4 There are passages in which the expression becomes flowing 
and turgid to suggest Lamartine, romantic and sentimental to create 
the proper atmosphere for Mme Desbordes-Valmore. This is all the 
more striking from the fact that he manages to keep the tinge of per- 
sonality in his own style moyen, not changing it completely. On occa- 
sion he creates the tone of his subject not by any modification of his 
style but by adopting the ideas and habits of thinking of the person 
studied; as for example treating of Mme Genlis, who was in essence a 
teacher and a moralist, he says: "You see, in fact, that in speaking of 
her I imitate her and draw my moral." 5 

Finally, Sainte-Beuve advised copious citation as a conscious and 
deliberate procedure. He saw, in judiciously chosen quotations, the 
best analysis and interpretation of a man's work. He himself possessed, 
either instinctively or by virtue of long and rigorous training, the ability 
to choose the passages in which the core and the essence of the character 
under consideration was most completely crystallized. In every essay 
whose plan permitted it he gave in generous profusion those repre- 
sentative and illuminating excerpts in which a man speaks for himself. 
The large number of such passages is obvious to anyone who but glances 
at the essays. Their adequacy would have to be proved by an excursus 
too long and too complicated to be undertaken here. But one soon 
becomes convinced that Sainte-Beuve had the rare gift of adequate 
representative selection. 

Though Sainte-Beuve did not publish even indirectly a system of 
rhetoric, a word must be said about literary style, since this matter 
loomed large in his opinion about an author, and since he practically 
never fails to comment on it. He was a clear and penetrating observer 
of the propriety of words, phrases, and images. He admired the clear, 
limpid, but colorful and individualistic, style of the classic school of 
French writers; he praises the manUre attique above and rather than 
the maniere asiatique, Hamilton rather than Balzac. 6 Among the first 
requirements he made of style is that it should be individual, should 

1 Causer ies du lundi, III, 1. 4 Ibid., IX, 362. 

2 Ibid., XI, 56. * Ibid., Ill, 37. 

3 Ibid., VIII, 495. 6 See "Precepts and Procedes," pp. 99 ff. 



150 SAIXTE-BEUV&S CRITICAL THEORY AXD PRACTICE 

reflect the man whose vehicle it is. He institutes on this basis a remark- 
able contrast between Cousin and Chateaubriand: "Quand on approche 
de Cousin, on trouve un tout autre horn me que celui qui se donne a con- 
naitre par ses ecrits ... toute une moitie ... de ses qualites distinctives 
et de ses traits saillants n'est nullement representee dans cette maniere 
d'ecrire." Chateaubriand on the other hand ''edit bien moins pure- 
ment, ... mais comme son style est a. lui! qualites et defauts!" 1 
Chateaubriand's style is effective, it cuts, while the sublime manner of 
Cousin's long periods misses the mark. He contrasts Mme de Stael 
with Bossuet. She must be read by understanding eyes, the eyes of 
people who, for the magnificence of the ensemble, will ignore the faults 
of detail. She omits too many of the links of her thought and becomes 
obscure, so that when the Academy comes to make an analysis of her 
style for the dictionary they are much troubled: "On allegue tantot 
le vague de l'expression, tantot Timpropriete des termes ou le peu 
d'analogie des membres. ... Autant Bossuet, meme ainsi demembre, 
gagne a tout coup et triomphe, autant Mme de Stael resiste peu." 2 
This delight in a clear, exact style may help to explain his otherwise 
mysterious admiration for the Bishop of Meaux. Though Sainte-Beuve 
leaves no doubt as to his preference of the Attic above the Asiatic style, 
he was not blind to the florid beauties of Balzac, his praise of which is 
saved from fulsomeness only by a slight touch of irony: 

J'aime de son style, dans les parties delicates, cette efflorescence ... par 
laquelle il donne a tout le sentiment de la vie et fait frissonner la page elle- 
meme. Mais je ne puis accepter, sous le couvert de la physiologic Tabus 
continuel de cette qualite, ce style si souvent chatouilleux et dissolvant, enerve, 
rose, et veine de toutes les teintes, ce style d'une corruption delicieuse, tout 
asiutique comme disaient nos maitres, plus brise par places et plus amolli 
que le corps d'un mime antique. 3 

An illuminating comment on Flaubert is this: ''le style est tres-soigne 
dans l'ouvrage de M. Flaubert, ... mais il est trop tendu, trop uniforme 
de tours. Les expressions, pour vouloir rencherir sur ce qui a ete dit 
deja, semblent forcees bien souvent. "•> A kindred criticism, allowing 
for the difference in tone, he offers upon the style of Lamennais: "A 
chaque page, c'est un coup de tocsin perpetuel, il n'y ont que des 
alarmes." He cannot rest in the beautiful style moyen but must produce 
force and astonishment until his style falls into monotonous exaggeration, 
stunning the mind by repeated blows and Anally destroying its recep- 

: Cjuseries du lunci. XI, 470. » CauserUs du lundi, EL, 44 

a Nouveaux lundis, II * Nouveaux lundis, IV, 91. 



PRACTICE IN CRITICISM 



151 



tivity. 1 This is at the opposite pole from that which is Sainte-Beuve's 
ideal style, that of the seventeenth century, the style of the regency, 3 
of Hamilton, of Mme de Sevigne, of Mme de Maintenon, who possesses 
"de l'ampleur, ... de Tabondance, de la recidive, une aisance libre et 
un cours heureux; mais ce qui me parait toujours y dominer plus que 
tout, c'est la justesse, la nettete et une parfaite exactitude, quelque 
chose que le terme d'ampleur enveloppe et depasse." 3 After all, however, 
it is Retz whom he admires most: "Le style de Retz est de la plus belle 
langue; il est plein de feu, et l'esprit des choses y circule." 4 He praises 
with enthusiasm Retz's use of words, of figures, his ease and grace, his 
complete freedom from effort. All told, he seems to find in Cardinal 
Retz the nearest approach to his full ideal of style. This style, as we 
may gather from the well-nigh innumerable notes on this subject, should 
be simple, straightforward, and clear, yet not unpoetic. He criticizes 
Guizot because his "style est triste et ne rit jamais"; 5 Necker because 
he is too abstract, 6 while Stendhal desiring to secure clarity and limpidity 
has excluded all poetry and color: "ces images et ces expressions de 
genie qui revetent la passion." 7 

It seems to us just in final summary to say that, keeping in mind the 
eclecticism and catholicity of Sainte-Beuve's mind and the practical 
and sane character of his critical procedure, remembering also that his 
dicta include principles from the old rhetorical and aesthetical as well 
as from the newer historical and scientific schools, his critical practice 
strikingly conforms to and embodies his theory of criticizing and his 
program of work. Without rigidity and formality, with great flexi- 
bility as to detail, he keeps his general scheme always in mind, both in 
appreciation and exposition of men and their work and in placing them 
in their types and classes and giving final judgments as to their values. 



1 Cahiers, p. 118. 

3 Causeries du lundi, I, 93. 

* Ibid., XL, 116. 

« Ibid., V, 60. 



s Ibid., I, 321. 
6 Ibid., VII, 369. 
ilbid., IX, 317. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

This list of books contains only those works which the author has found 
most useful in the study of Sainte-Beuve's literary criticism. Good bibliog- 
raphies on Sainte-Beuve are easily accessible in Lanson, Manuel bibliographique 
de la litterature franqaise moderne (i 500-1900), Paris, 191 2; in Thieme, Guide 
bibliographique de la litterature franqaise de 1800 a igo6, Paris, 1907; in Harper, 
Sainte-Beuve, Philadelphia and London, 1909; and in Michaut, Sainte-Beuve 
avant les lundis, Fribourg, 1903. 

Sainte-Beuve. Port-Royal. 5 vols., 1849-59. 

Portraits litter aires, 1862-64. 

Portraits contemporains, 1869-71. 

Chateaubriand et son groupe littSraire sous V empire, 1861. 

Causeries du lundi (3d ed., revised), 1857-72. 

Nouveaux lundis (2d ed., revised), 1864-78. 

Correspondance, 1877-78. 

Nouvelle correspondance, 1880. 

Cahiers de Sainte-Beuve: suivis de quelques pages de literature 
antique, 1876. 

A. A. (Alfred Austin). " Sainte-Beuve's Critical Method." C or nhill Magazine, 
July, 1878. Arnold, Matthew. "Sainte-Beuve," in Encyclopaedia 
Britannica. 

. "Sainte-Beuve," in Essays in Criticism, Third Series, reprinted, 

Boston, 1910. 

Babbitt, Irving. "Impressionist versus Judicial Criticism," in Publications 
of the Modern Language Association of America. New Series, XIV, No. 3 
(1906), p. 687. 

. Masters of Modern French Criticism. New York, 191 2. 

Brunetiere, F. L' evolution des genres: la critique. Paris, 1890. 

. "Sainte-Beuve," Living Age, CCXLV, 513. 

Caumont, A. La critique litteraire de Sainte-Beuve. Frankfort a.M., 1887. 

Faguet, E. Etudes critiques du XIX siecle. Paris, 1887. 

. Politiques et moralistes du XIX siecle. Third Series. 3 vols. Paris, 

1891-99. 

. "Sainte-Beuve, critique dramatique," Propos de thedtre (Paris), V, 



228 ff. 

152 



BIBLIOGRjiPHY 153 

Gayley (C. M.) and Scott (F. N.) An Introduction to the Materials and Methods 

of Literary Criticism. Boston, 1899. 
Giraud, V. Essai sur Taine. 3d ed., 1902. 
. "L'ceuvre de Sainte-Beuve," in Revue des deux mondes, II, 112. 

. Table alphabStique et analytique des "Premiers lundis," "Nouveaux 

Lundis" et "Portraits Cantemporains" avec etude sur Sainte-Beuve et son 
ceuvre. Paris, 1903. 

Guerard, A. L. French Prophets of Yesterday. London and New York, 1913. 

Harper, G. M. Masters of French Literature. New York, 1901. 

. Sainte-Beuve. Philadelphia and London, 1009. 

. "Sainte-Beuve," Scribner's Magazine, XXII, 594. 

D'Haussonville. Sainte-Beuve, sa vie et ses muvres. Paris, 1875. 

Lanson, G. " Sainte-Beuve: ce qui fait de lui maitre de la critique et le patron 
des critiques," Revue de Belgique, 2 me serie, XLIII, 5; Revue universitaire, 
XIV (I), 119. 

Levallois, J. Sainte-Beuve: Vozuvre du poete, la methode du critique, Vhomme 
public, Vhomme prive. Paris, 1872. 

Mazzoni, G. Tra libri e carte. Milan, 1887. 

Michaut, G. Etudes sur Sainte-Beuve. Paris, 1905. 

. Pages de critique et d'histoire litter aire: XIX siecle. Paris, 1910. 

. Sainte-Beuve avant les lundis; essai sur la formation de son esprit et 

de sa methode. Fribourg, 1903. 

Pellissier, G. Le mouvement litteraire au XIX siecle. Paris, 1889. 

. "Sainte-Beuve, Taine et la critique contemporaine," Revue des 

Revues, XL VIII (1904), 499. 

Pontmartin, Armand. Nouveaux samedis. Paris, 1870. 

Robertson, J. M. Essays toward a Critical Method. London, 1889. 

Saintsbury, G. A History of Criticism. New York and London, 1004. 

Scherer, E. Etudes critiques sur la litter ature contemporaine. Paris, 1863-82. 

Seche, Leon, Etudes d'histoire romantique: Sainte-Beuve. Paris, 1904. 

Taine, H. Dernier s essais de critique et d'histoire. Paris, 1894. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Note. — The detailed analytic table of contents constitutes an index of the subject-matter. It 
were obviously impossible and unnecessary to index the name Sainte-Beuve, or the citations of the 
Causeries du lundi, the Noveaux lundis, the Portraitcs littiraires, and the Correspondance. 



About, Edmond, 124 
Alambert, d', 124 
Albany, Countess of, 13a 
Ampere, 124, 138 
Antin, Due d', 133 
Arago, 23 

Arnold, Matthew, 15, 92 
Aubigne, d', 94 
Aurevilley, Barbey d', 47 

Babbitt, Irving, 7, 10, 19, 20, 39, 41, 42, 

43, 59, 81, 85, 130, 145 
Bachaumont, 86, 127, 132 
Bacon, 37 

Balzac, Honore* de, 19, 25, 44, 72, 88, 116, 
138, 143, 145, 149 

Barante, 139 

Barbier, 138 

Barnave, 126 

Barthelemy, 104 

Bastide, Jules, 127 

Bazin, 12 

Beaumarchais, 98, 119, 145, 146 

Beaumont, Mme de, 127 

Beaunier, 128 

Beranger, 20, 88, 113, 136, 137 

Berenice (Racine), 18 

Bernis, 129, 130 

Beyle, Henri, 16 

Bible de Royaumont, 30 

Boileau, 14, 18, 28, 42, 43, 66, 69, 77, 81, 
82, 102, 120, 123, 137, 145 

Boileau, Gilles, 120 

Boileau, Jacques, 120 

Boindin, 124 

Bonald, 146 

Borel, 123 

Bossuet, 20, 58, 61, 66, 75, 76, 94, 96, 
126, 133, 145, 146 

Bouchardy, 123 



Bourdaloue, 126, 135 
Bourgogne, Due de, 36 
Brentano, Bettina, 114 
Broglie, Due de, 77 
Brosses, de, 117 
Brownell, 47, 56 
Brunetiere, 5 
Burger, 123 
Buff on, 98, 135 
Burns, 137 
Bussy-Rabutin, 114 
Byron, 136, 137 

Caesar, 145 

Cahiers, essay on, 8, 10, 17, 22, 24, 27, 

40, 43, 44, 45, 50, 5i, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 

71, 76,92,97,99, 115, 118 

Callot, 116 

Caracteres (La Bruyere), 116 

Carr6, Frank, 124 

Carrel, 93, 133 

Catherine of Russia, 91 

Caylus, Mme de, no 

CSnacle, la, 64 

Cervantes, 12, 33 

Champfleury, 56 

Chapelle, 86, 127, 132 

Chaulieu, 128, 135 

Chateaubriand, 13, 15, 19, 30, 40, 55, 66, 
95, 98, 100, 119, 123, 130, 141, 145, 
147, 148 

Chateaubriand et son groupe littiraire 
(Sainte-Beuve), 2, 4, 8, 13, 19, 25, 30, 
34, 36, 64, 70, 71, 76, 108, in, 133 

Ch6nier, Andr6, 62, 66, 71, 98, 146 

Cheron, 147 

Chesterfield, 113 

Childe-Harold (Byron), 65 

Choisy, TAbbe" de, 117 

Chrysostome, 65 



157 



158 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 



Cicero, 66, 145 

Coleridge, 72 

Colle, 113 

Condillac, 107 

Condorcet, 146 

Confessions (Rousseau), 137 

Confucius, 42 

Constant, Benjamin, 116, 129 

Contes (LaFontaine), 18 

Coppee, Francois, 144 

Corneille, 29, 102, 104, 114, 125 

Coulmann, 85, 119 

Courier, 118, 138, 146 

Cousin, 40 

Cousin Bette (Balzac), 143 

Cowper, 122, 123, 126, 127, 136, 145, 146 

Cramail, de, 136 

Crise (Octave Feuillet), 141 

Criticism (Brownell), 47 

Cuvier, 30 

Dacier, Mme, 31, 119, 131 

Dangeau, 86 

Dante, 45, 86 

Deflfand, Mme du, 74, 114, 125 

De la litter attire (Mme de Stael), 31 

Delecluze, 105 

Delphine (Mme de Stael), 103 

Denne-Baron, 133 

Desbordes-Valmore, Mme, 71, 109, 117, 

120, 148 

Deschanel, in 

Diderot, 17, 26, 74, 81, 82, 120, 124 

Discours sur la revolution (Guizot), 87, 88 

Dominique (Fromentin), 143 

Dondey, Theophile, 123 

Don Quixote, 26, 27 

Ducis, 117, 118, 146 

Duclos, 113, 124 

Dumas, pere, 136 

Dupont, Pierre, 118 

Duseigneur, Jean, 123 

Duveyrier, 83, in 

Eckerman, 86 

Epinay, Mme d', 76, 131 

Essai de critique naturelle, Deschanel, in 

Essai sur Taine (Giraud), 40 



Essay on Criticism (Pope), 69 

Essay on Man (Pope), 43 

Essay toward a Critical Method (Robert- 
son), 48 

Estr6es, Gabrielle d', 131 

Etienne, 13, 146 

litudes critiques sur la litterature contem- 
poraine (Scherer), 4 

Euripides, 59, 66, 145 

Fables (LaFontaine), 18 

Faguet, Smile, 5, 47, 103 

Fanny (Feydeau), 143, 147 

Fauriel, 81 

Feletz, de, 113, 133 

Fenelon, 42, 66, 96, 100, 126, 145 

Feuillet, Octave, 116, 137, 141, 142 

Feydeau, 68, 143, 147 

Firdousi, 42 

Flaubert, 17, 19, 63, 65, 68, 93, 137, 139, 
143, 145, 146, 147 

Flechier, 100, 126, 127 

Florian, 121, 126 

Fontanes, 19, 69, 81, 120 

Fontanes, Comtesse de, 1 20 

Fontenelle, 117, 135 

Foucault, 145 

France, Anatole, 49, 76 

Francueil, 131 

Freret, 124 

Fromentin, 143, 144, 145 

Galiani, PAbb£, 126, 129 

Gandar, Eugdne, 135 

Gautier, Theophile, 103, 123, 144 

Gavarni, 123 

Gay, Mme Sophie, 120 

Gayley and Scott, 24 

GSdoyn, l'Abbe\ 53 

Genin, 80 

Genlis, Mme de, 78, 135, 147 

George Dandin (Moliere), 18 

Gibbon, 118, 141 

Gil Bias (Le Sage), 100 

Girardin, Mme de, 53, 120, 141 

Girardin, Saint-Marc, 15, 30, 43 

Giraud, Victor, 40 

Globe, The, 2 

Goethe, 44, 65, 66, 80, 81, 82, 86, 113, 139 



INDEX 



159 



Goncourts, de, 65, 142, 144 

Gourville, 137 

Grignau, Mme de, 120 

Grimm, 15, 71, 76, 89, 131 

Gu6rin, Eugenie de, 119 

Gu6rin, Maurice de, 115, 117, 119, 123, 
126 

Guizot, 40, 87 

Halevy, 133 

Hamilton, 99, 113, 134, 149 
Hamlet, 65 

Harper, George McLean, 7, 14, 20, 28, 
47, 58, 61, 65, 79, 86, 101 

d'Haussonville, 47 

Hazlit, 136 

Helvgtius, 15 

H6ron, Eugdne, 31 

Hesiod, 145 

Histoire de la UtUrature anglaise (Taine), 

32,35 
Histoire de la literature franqaise (Nisard), 

91 
Histoire de Sibylle, Feuillet, 142 
History of Criticism (Saintsbury), 1, 130 
Hoffmann, 78 
Holbach, 15 

Homer, 40, 45, 59, 66, 71, 145 
Horace, 42, 66, 137, 139, 145 
Houssaye, Ars&ne, 123 
Huet, 115, 117, 118 
Hugo, 71, 75, 96, 98, 103, 145, 148, 149 

James, William, 42 

Janin, 115 

Jasmin, 20, 23, 133 

Jeannin, 20 

Jeffrey, 123 

Job, 42 

Johnson, 75 

Joinville, 149 

Jordan, Camille, 115 

Joseph Delorme (Sainte-Beuve), 64 

Joubert, 81, 123, 124, 127, 128 

Jouffroy, 146 

Journal de la Sante du roi Louis XIV, 83 

Jussieu, 34, 118 

Keats, John, 48 



La Bibliotlque en vacances (Monselet), 41 
La Bruy&re, 41, 42, 116, 129 
Lacaussade, 142 
Lacordaire, 89, 117, 124, 126 
Lafayette, C. de, 100, 141, 144, 145 
LaFontaine, 18, 42, 66, 113, 123, 127, 

*33, 135, 136, 137, 146 
La Harpe, 28, 78, 130 

Lamartine, 71, 119, 120, 133, 139, 146, 
147, 148, 149 

Lammennais, 113, 132, 139 

La Monnoye, 114 

La nouvelle HSloise (Rousseau), 103 

La petite comtesse (Feuillet), 142 

Laprade, de, 54, 74 

La Rochefoucauld, 42, 43, 91 

Latouche, 88 

Latour-Francqueville, Mme de, 131 

La vie litter aire (Anatole France), 76 

Le Brun-Pindar, 130, 141 

Le Cid (Corneille), 104, 125 

Leclerq, Th6odore, 117, 124, 126 

Lecouvreur, Adrienne, 124, 131, 134 

U evolution de la critique (Bruneti&re), 5 

Lefaux DemStrius (MerimSe), 145 

Lemaitre, 49 

Le Misanthrope (Moliere), 18 

Le rouge et noir (Stendhal), 144 

Leroux, 92 

Les Girondins (Lamartine), no 

Les memoires d'Outre-tombe (Chateau- 
briand), 141 

Les mois (Roucher) , 140 

Les parents pauvres (Balzac), 143 

Le Sage, 18, 100, 113, 140 

Lespinasse, Mile de, 74, 131, 135 

Lessing, 82 

Les templiers (Raynouard), 140 

Levallois, Jules, 3, 4, 5, 47 

U Homer e (Mme Dacier), 30 

Life of Caesar (Napoleon III), 84 

Life of William Cowper (Thomas Wright), 
122 

Limitation de Jisus Christ (Thomas a 
Kempis),45 

Lisle, Leconte de, 134 

Literary Criticism (Gayley and Scott), 24 

Littr6, 94, 117, 118 

Livy, 10, 145 



160 SAINTE-BEUVE'S CRITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE 



Lorraine, Due de, 116 
Lucretius, 145 

Lysias, 100 

Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 137, 139, 
140, 147 

Mademoiselle de Maupin (Th6ophile 
Gautier, 147 

Magnet, August, 123 

Magnin, 125, 130 

Maintenon, Mme de, 66 

Malstre, Joseph de, 13, 40, 118, 122 

Malebranche, 107 

Malherbe, 14, 127, 132, 138 

Malouet, 146 

Manon Lescaut (Abbe" Pr6vost), 45, 100 

Marie Antoinette, 79, 131, 134 

Marivaux, 116, 132 

Marmontel, 124 

Masters of Modern French Criticism (Bab- 
bitt), 7, 39, 59, 81, 85, 130 

Maucroix, 100 
Maynard, 132 
Mazarin, 124 
Mazzoni, 1 
Menander, 42 
Mennais, l'Abb6 de la, 38 
Merimee, 138, 145 
Mezeray, 120 
Michaud, 130 
Michaut, Gustave, 6 
Michelet, 36, 91, 140 
Milton, 137, 142, 145 
Mirabeau, 117, 118, 129, 146 
Mitton, 136 

MoliSre, 18, 66, 86, 102, 103, 134, 136 
Monald, 146 
Moniteur, 84 
Monselet, 141 

Montaigne, 42, 66, 88, 133, 145 
Montalambert, 123, 126 
Montesquieu, 21, 75, 89, 98, 135, 146 
Montluc, 114, 134, 149 
Moore, Thomas, 123, 136 
Moreau, Hegesippe, 125, 128, 130, 141 
Motteville, Mme de, 117, 127, 131 
Musset, Alfred de, 44, 59, 103, 123, 124, 
132, 133 

Nanteuil, Celestin, 123 
Napoleon, 146 
Napoleon III, 84 



Nature of Poetry (Stedman), 55 
Necker, Mme, 33, 115, 120 
Nerval, Gerard de, 123 
Nisard, 91 
Nodier, 146 

Obermann (Senancour), 124 
O'Donnell, Countess, 120 
Olivier, Juste, 79 

Paradol, 124 

Pariset, 125 

Parny, 124, 125, 128, 141, 146 

Pascal, 96, 99, 100, 126, 146 

Pasquier, 116, 133 

Patin, Guy, 39, 115 

Paty, Boulay, 142 

Paul et Virginie (Saint-Pierre), 45 

Pellissou, 146 

Pensees (Pascal), 96 

Perrault, 120 

PStrarque, 135 

Pindar, 60, 137 

Piron, 117, 118, 120, 124, 135 

Planche, 80 

Plato, 86 

Pleiade, 147 

Poeme des champs (de Lafayette), 141 

Politiques et moralistes (Faguet), 5 

Pontmartin, 49, 79, 93, 95, 133 

Pope, 38, 42, 43, 66, 69, 71, 72, 79, 81, 82, 

93, *35 
Portrait de Fontenelle (La Bruyere), 97 
Pragmatism (William James), 42 
Prevost, l'Abbe, 45, 60, 114, 124 
Princesse de Cleves (Mme de LaFayette), 

64 
Provinciates (Pascal), 96 
Prudhomme, Sully, 141 

Quinault, 42 
Quintilian, 66 

Rabelais, 66, 113, 116, 136 

Racan, 132 

Racine, 18, 61, 66, 76, 102, 134, 145, 146 

Racine, Louis, 61 

Ramond, 113 

Raynouard, 13, 114, 129, 134, 140, 146 

Recamier, Mme, 124, 125, 131 

Renan, 31, 6i, 112, 113, 119, 135, 136 

Resignation (St. Augustine), 88 



INDEX 



161 



Retz, 95, 12S, 130, 146 

Revue de deux mondes, 2 

Revue de Paris, 2 

Rigault, 135 

Rivarol, 86, 128, 138 

Robert, Leopold, 117, 145 

Robertson, J. M., 48 

Roederer, 115, 128 

Rogier, Camille, 123 

Rollin, 30, 34, 123, 138 

Roucher, 140 

Rousseau, 65, 104, no, 115, 126, 127, 

132, 135, 137 
Rousseau, Jean Baptiste, 61 

Sainte-Beuve, critique dramatique{Fa.g\iet) , 

103 
Sainte-Beuve (Harper), 47, 79, 86 
Sainte-Beuve (Leon Seche), 148 
Saint-Evremond, 136 
Saint- Just, 147 
Saint Lambert, 115 
Saint-Martin, 130 

Saint-Pierre, Bernardine de, 45, 100, 127 
Saint-Real, l'Abbe de, 84 
Saint-Simon, 18, 23, 118, 126, 128 
Saintsbury, 1, 6, 130 

Salammbd (Flaubert), 17, 19, 63, 93, 137, 

140 
Salomon, 42 

Sales, St. Francois de, 115, 126 
Sand, George, &8, 138, 143, 145 
Sautelet, 124 
Scar pin (Moliere), 18 
Scherer, Edward. 4, 19, 47, 79. 141 
Schlegel, 82 

Scudery, Georg de, 1 20 
Scudery, Mile de, 113, 120, 126 
SechS, Leon, 47, 148 
Seiy£s, 145 

Sevigne, Mme de, 61, 66, 120 
Shakespeare, 40, 45, 58, 59, 66, 86, 137 
Sismondi, 34 
Solon, 42 
Sophocles, 59, 86 

Stael, Mme de, 20, 31, 66, 8i, 82, 120 
Stapfer, Albert, 124 
Stedman, 55 
Stendhal, 130, 133, 144 
Stolberg, 123 
Sue, EugSne, 138 



Sully, 39 

Surville, Mme de, 1 19 

Swetchine, Mme de, 19, 20, 131 

Tableau de la literature franqaist au 

i6me siicle (Sainte-Beuve), 147 
Tacitus, 10 

Taine, n, 32, 35, 38, 40, 42, 69, 74, 93, 
112, 115, 122, 123, 124, 125 

Talleyrand, 109, 129, 130, 146 

Ttlemaque, 70 

Terence, 42 

Terrasson, l'Abbe\ 124 

Thiers, 100, 139 

Theocritus, 145 

Theognis, 42 

Thirese Racquin (Zola), 56, 67, 146 

Tibullus, 42 

Tocqueville, 13 

Touareg du Nord (Henri Duveyrier), 83 

Tra Libri e Carti (Mazzoni), 1 

Treville, 136 

Valliere, Mile de la, 86, 131 

Valmiki, 42 

Vauvenargues, 128, 146 

Verdelin, Mme de, 131 

Verlaine, 142 

Vernet, Horace, 43, 117, 119, 134 

Veuillot, Louis, 143 

Vigny, Alfred de, 98, 125, 139, 142. 144 

Villars, Le Marechal de, 109 

Villemain, 13, 31, 75, 139 

Villon, 113 

Violin de Faience (Champfleury), 56 

Virgil, 35, 43, 59, 66, 145 

Volney, 118, 127 

Voltaire, 22, 42, 43, 66, 81, 82, 100, 113, 

135, 136 
Volupte (Sainte-Beuve), 64 
Voss, 123 
Vyasa, 42 

Walckenaer, 55, 98 

Walpole, 146 

Weiss, 124 

Windsor Forest (Pope), 145 

Wordsworth, 48 
Wright, Thomas, 122 

Xenophon, 100, 145 

Zola, 56, 65, 67, 137, 143, 146 



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